Good Wednesday to you dear Steemians. Today is the first day of the month of August.
In the last month of July our space faced some phenomena we can say visibility of the planet Jupiter in our space and lunar eclipse we experienced in the night of Friday 27th.
The gas giant planet Jupiter was still well visible high in the southwest in the late evenings. It was seen shining with bright steady yellowish light. It’s also easy to identify the four major moons through a strong pair of binoculars.
The ringed planet Saturn just passed opposition in the constellation of Sagittarius. It was fainter than Jupiter and it also shined as a yellowish star that doesn’t twinkle. Through any small telescope, the rings of Saturn had an amazing sight.
The brilliant planet Venus was still around over in the west during the early evening and, on July 15, the thin crescent Moon was seen close to Venus. Four days later, on the evening of July 19, the Moon moved across the sky to came just above Jupiter. Five days after that, on the evening of July 24, the nearly-full Moon was then above Saturn.
The red planet Mars came to opposition on the 27th in the constellation of Capricorn. This means that Mars came closer to the Earth and, therefore, it much brighter than in previous months. The orbit of Mars was not circular and its distance from the Sun varied considerably. Then it was closer to the Sun than on average and this caused planet wide dust storms on Mars. When this happened, very little detail was seen on the surface of the planet even with a large telescope.
These dust storms can last many days or even weeks. The Mars rovers that are solar-powered will not be able to operate during these conditions.
Also, in the early evening of July 27, there was a total lunar eclipse visible from our part of the world. This eclipse was unusual because as the Sun set in the northwest on July 27, the already eclipsed full Moon rose in the southeast. This was quite dramatic as the full Moon passed through the center of the Earth’s shadow, so it was a blood red color as it slowly rose higher in the evening sky.
The Moon was at last quarter on the 6th, new on the 13th, first quarter on the 19th and full on July 27.
Thank you for reading and hope you've learnt much from this article.
These photos were taken On Friday night via my phone and brothers phone and were uploaded on my facebook account
https://www.facebook.com/jackal.phillip?hc_ref=ARTcj56d9aCCcD-5ls32VGaVRYamBzuCK8whu0Fm2E44wh190gd1g3Y1x_rxxreEM7I