Astroblog: The Moon, a few planets and a <b>lot</b> of cloud!

Monday, February 23, 2009

The Moon, a few planets and a lot of cloud!

The Moon, Mercury, Jupiter and Mars on the morning of Monday, February 23. You will need to click on the images to enlarge them.

Well, of course it would happen that most of the sky was clear this morning, except that bit where the planetary massing occurred. Still I got to see the Moon and its attendants play peek-a-boo with the clouds, and through binoculars the earthshine look quite nice, with threads of cloud giving a dramatic effect. Mars was the hardest to pick up, being closer to the horizon where the cloud was. Did get some nice views of all 3 planets at various stages, and these two pictures (around 5:30 am and 6:00 am), capture some of those moments.

Labels: astrophotography, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Moon, Observational Astronomy

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 7:02 am

Comments:

Looks like a painting! Surreal! Thanks for the post.

# posted by

Anonymous : 11:47 am

Hi Ian
We had a great view here in Northland NZ, but I was unable to capture it well on our little camera.
I'm curious, could you explain why this morning all the planets are still visible but not the moon? Where did it go?
Many thanks
Bridget

# posted by