In late December, the Sun was low in the southern sky for those of us in the northern hemisphere. As the weeks and months passed, the Sun crossed the sky at higher altitudes. By late June, it reached its highest arc before starting downward again. The low point in December is the Winter Solstice while the high point in June is the Summer Solstice.
Imagine placing a south pointing camera with a very accurate clock timer in a permanent location to record the Sun’s altitude in the sky every week or so at noon for an entire year. The series of photos would record the vertical change of the Sun as you would expect. But, another thing would be obvious in the photos. The Sun would also show changes in horizontal position in the photos. Here is a good example made by Giuseppe Petricca from Sulmona, Abruzzo, Italy. This figure is called an Analemma.
Many people were able to see the recent lunar eclipse. I am certain many slept through it. I’ve seen many of them and decided that a view through the living room window was good enough this time. I went back to bed. Later in the day I was curious about the other more unique views that others enjoyed. I will share three of them here.
Space Weather Image Gallery
I frequently visit Spaceweather to look at user-submitted images from around the world. I found this composite of a sequence of images taken by Tom Laskowski of Indiana.
Taken by Tom Laskowski on March 14, 2025 @ South Bend, Indiana
During the final week of February the planets are aligned across the sky from southwest to southeast just after sunset. This sky chart shows them each circled on 22 Feb at about 6 PM. The sky will not be completely dark. Wait a few more minutes. Don’t wait too long for it to get darker. Mercury is closest to the Sun and requires an unobstructed horizon. It will descend to the horizon if you wait too long. This view will persist for the last week of February.
The text of each circled planet name is small. Enlarge the image if you are able. They should read in order from SW to SE Mercury, Saturn, Neptune, Venus, Uranus, Jupiter, and Mars. That makes 7 planets. Look down at your feet for planet 8, the Earth.
Located in the southern skies, NGC 3324 lies close to the great Carina Nebula complex. I’ve never had opportunity to see it with my eyes. Telescopic views show it about 9100 light years away. This image of Carina shows a small yellow box in the lower right corner as the location of NGC 3324. For a sense of size, Carina is about 4 full moons wide making 3324 rather small in diameter. Within the small yellow box is a smaller pink box. The subject of this post lies within that boundary.
The occultation was to begin just after 8 PM local time. The sky was clear but it was 15˚ F outside. The location in the sky was ideal relative to my house. I set the tripod with camera on the front porch and started recording images. The interval timer was set to trip the shutter every 2 minutes. After about 10 minutes, Mars was hidden behind the Moon. I brought the tripod and camera indoors and watched a TV program with my wife until 9 PM. Mars was to emerge from occultation at about 9:10. Just before then I set up the tripod and camera, started the interval timer, and went back inside. Every 3 or 4 minutes I went back outside briefly to re-point the camera since it wasn’t tracking the Moon.
The images turned out well. I used Pixelmator Pro to layer the images into this one composite. This image shows two locations of Mars at 8:01 and 8:03 prior to occultation on the left of the Moon. From the Earth point of view, the Moon was moving left as it crossed in front of Mars. When Mars started to emerge on the right side it was 9:11 with the final position at 9:19 PM local time. This image is best viewed on a larger screen.
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My camera has no interval timer built in. I used this intervalometer from JJC. It is not expensive and does a good job.
Perhaps you remember a story from 20 years ago about Mars being as big as a full Moon. In case you don’t, here is what Wikipedia has to say about that:
“The Mars hoax was a hoax circulated by e-mail that began in 2003, that claimed that Mars would look as large as the full Moon to the naked eye on August 27, 2003. The hoax has since resurfaced each time before Mars is at its closest to Earth, about every 26 months.”
It is very obvious that Mars and the Moon are not even remotely the same size as shown in this enlarged part of an image.
How I See It 