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| Moon passes by Mars and Saturn | 6.6.2008 15:30 |
| Tomorrow night the moon will be closely crossing paths with the planet Mars. According to rough visual inspection using Your Sky, Luna and Mars will be as close as they get with the constraint that the sky is dark as soon as the sun goes down enough for the spectacle to be visible from my location (California, USA, approx. 04:45 UTC 6/8/2008). Far enough east from California (about from Louisiana to Western Europe) it will be dark at closest apparent approach, which I estimate to be about 01:45 UTC on 6/8/2008. As far as spotting the spectacle goes, all you have to do is locate the cresent moon, and Mars will be the bright reddish "star" slightly to the north of it. This graphic shows that Mars is located between the constellations Cancer and Leo: | |
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| The next night the moon will do the same thing with Saturn, passing below the ringed planet as a slightly larger crescent. Closest approach looks to be sometime after it gets too close to the western horizon, which is good for Australians but good enough for me and other Californians, as it will be plenty dark as the combo drifts closer to the edge. 05:00 to 06:30 on 6/9/2008 looks like a good time to view this in a low-zoom/wide-angle telescope. | |
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© 2008, Andrew Ging