From Left To Right – Mars – Venus – Crescent Moon

I think I gave a heads up about this a month or so ago but it snuck up on me.

Mars (getting faint, reddish) on the left of Venus (bright white) with the two-day old crescent Moon (it’s the moon-ish looking thing over by the phallic tree, duh) lined up as advertisec.

Could have gone out and caught them a few minutes earlier, but then Mars would have been pretty washed out in the sunset. As it was I never saw Mars with the naked eye, but it was easily visible in binoculars.

Over the next few days Mars will get more dim and start sinking toward the horizon. It will be going around the far side of the Sun from our viewpoint, so if you have anything you want to tell your Martian rover or orbiter, now would be a really good time to do so. In a week or so it will be out of touch for a month or so.

Venus will be getting brighter and higher in the sky for another month or so, then starting its trip back around the gravitational race track and too near the Sun to be seen.

Tonight I had to shift a bit and put that tall tree between the Moon and the planets so that I could get one more set of photos before the Moon was down behind the trees. Stupid planetary rotation…

Taking individual close ups, the Moon was very cresecenty and had some details and craters visible along the terminator.

If I had better equipment and could get a better, more detailed picture of Venus, you would see that it’s in a crescent phase exactly like the Moon’s phase. It’s a geometry thing over 186,000,000 miles. (Give or take a couple million.)

As always, if click on the photos you’ll get to see them in full-screen or full size.

Also, as always, if you missed it tonight it will still (sorta) be there tomorrow night and every night at sunset for a few days, taking into account the above notes about Mars getting dimmer and sinking down below and past Venus (in a relative way) and the Moon moving up into the sky and getting more towards a quarter moon every day.