"What Was That Big Star Next to the Moon Last Night?"

By Nancy Atkinson - September 3, 2009 at 6:36 AM UTC | Stars
Conjuction-Kevin.jpg

[/caption] Anyone ask you that question this morning? Jupiter was only 3 degrees from the Moon last night, making a pretty (and bright!) conjuction. I put out a call on

Twitter

last night for pictures of the event, and here are a few that were shared. Above is one taken by Kevin Jung in Grand Rapids, Michigan USA. Click the picture for more of Kevin's images. Also, if you looked at Jupiter with a telescope last night (Sept 2) at 4:43 to 6:29 Universal Time (12:43 a.m. to 2:29 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time) you may have also noticed something was missing: Jupiter's moons were hiding! Ganymede and Europa passed in front of the giant planet, while Io and Callisto will passed behind Jupiter (from our point of view) making it nearly impossible to visually detect any moons around Jupiter. Our own Brian Ventrudo explains all on his site

One Minute Astronomer.

And here's some more images from the conjuction:

[caption id="attachment_38949" align="aligncenter" width="481" caption=" Moon + Jupiter + a seagull, at a resort in Southern Portugal. Credit: Daniel Fischer"]

[/caption]

Here's a nice shot from Daniel Fischer (a.k.a.

cosmos4u

on Twitter) who took this image while in Portugal. Check out

Daniel's website,

too, for lots of space and astronomy info. [caption id="attachment_38950" align="aligncenter" width="580" caption="Moon and Jupiter conjuction. Credit: Emily Lakdawalla"]

[/caption] This one is from

Emily Lakdawalla

, blogger for the Planetary Society. If you're wondering why the Moon looks so orange in this picture, Emily is currently looking through the smokey skies of the "Station Fire" out in southern California.
[caption id="attachment_38951" align="aligncenter" width="375" caption="Moon-Jupiter conjuction. Credit: David Woods"]

[/caption] This is a pretty view of the conjuction from David Woods, who took this image from the mountains of Virginia, USA. Click the image to see more of David's handiwork.

Thanks for sharing your pictures

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com