The Pike, Planets and Stars

A rather rare occurrence happened this week when lots of our Solar System planets were almost in a line with the moon too.

Here I am at my local Hartshead Pike monument looking up at the moon. The bright ‘star’ to the bottom left of that is actually the planet Jupiter. If we carried on left from the moon –just beyond my picture we would see another bright star which was in fact the planet Mars. Just at the bottom right corner of the moon is the Pleiades Star cluster (7 sisters) with the planet Uranus to the right of that. Traveling to the bottom right of the shot is another bright object –the planet Venus and if we were to travel a little more to the right and down out of my shot we would see the planet Saturn. Of course we also see the constellation of Orion with its famous belt here to the left of the moon What a fantastic night sky once we know what we are looking at!
See PiP for Mars view.

Essential full screen

Enjoy the day.