Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2016 August 16 
Posted on 08/16/2016 7:13:11 AM PDT by ThomasMore
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2016 August 16
Explanation: It is not a coincidence that planets line up. That's because all of the planets orbit the Sun in (nearly) a single sheet called the plane of the ecliptic. When viewed from inside that plane -- as Earth dwellers are likely to do -- the planets all appear confined to a single band. It is a coincidence, though, when several of the brightest planets all appear in nearly the same direction. Such a coincidence was captured just last week. Featured above, six planets and Earth's Moon were all imaged together last week, just before sunset, from Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, Australia. A second band is visible across the top of this tall image -- the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy.
(Excerpt) Read more at apod.nasa.gov ...
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Nice!
You left out Galactic Center!.................
Great observation...
This is spectacular. The planets align and Hillary is charged with perjury. It’s a great day in the neighborhood.
I see Jupiter aligned with Mars but I can’t tell what house the Moon is in.
I prefer to call it Coruscant.
CC
The Moon is in Virgo. The bright star nearby is Spica.
Just a little later on that night, you could pick up Neptune. It would be just about to rise behind the photographer.
If the photographer could have added a few hundred pixels to the top, he could have gotten the dwarf planet Pluto.
This is actually a very nice photo.
awesome and ethereal!
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