This morning, 10 Oct 2023, the Moon and Venus both encountered the bright star Regulus in the constellation Leo. Here is the predawn scene depicted by Starry Night Pro 8 software. The body of Leo lies in the lower left. His head rises near the top of the image. The yellow highlight box shows Regulus surrounded.
Zooming in to capture the region in the yellow box and add some labels.
I felt this was an important topic to share. Be attentive to the risks to you and your loved ones.
The NOAA weather satellites GOES-East and GOES-West offer full disk views of Earth over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. This image is from GOES-West in stationary orbit 22,300 miles above the equator over the central Pacific. At the time of this image, the Sun was directly behind the satellite illuminating the entire view. In the center is a brightened region of the ocean. It is caused by light reflected directly back to GOES off of the water and waves. Normally, water surfaces appear dark. This phenomenon is called sunglint. Several examples are shown at that link.
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I looked at the full disk imagery from the GOES-East satellite to see if it was detecting clouds from tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic. The images every 10 minutes are compiled and viewable as video. That imagery also showed sunglint during the daytime hours.
Show Me MoreI remember spending a lot of time as a youth browsing through our family’s set of encyclopedias. Education was valued in our home. Recently, I was looking at another book we had for reference titled The Volume Library. It has 2,424 pages and weighs over 8 pounds.
Venus travels around the Sun in a faster orbit than Earth. On the days close to 13 August 2023, Venus passed between Earth and the Sun as it lapped our planet. Since then, it has moved ahead of the Sun toward the west. It rises in the east before sunrise and presents a beautiful view. In fact, if you carefully track its location with reference to some object near you like a tree branch, you can see it well after the Sun rises.
Today, our sky was very clear. I wondered if I could get a photograph of Venus as it passed directly south at noon. I got my Go-To telescope out, aligned it to vertical and north-south, then turned it on. Its GPS quickly said it was ready so I asked it to go-to Venus. After of few seconds of slewing it was almost perfectly centered on the planet. I replaced the eyepiece with my cheap eyepiece camera connected to an old cell phone via USB. A little tweak of direction and focus and it was ready to save the image.
How I See It 