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Credit & Copyright: Chengcheng Xu
Explanation:
Saturn now rises before midnight in planet Earth's sky.
On July 24, the naked-eye planet
was in close conjunction,
close on the sky,
to a waning gibbous Moon.
But from some locations on planet Earth the
ringed gas giant
was occulted,
disappearing behind
the Moon for about an hour
from skies over parts of Asia and Africa.
Because the Moon and bright planets wander through the sky near the
ecliptic plane, such
occultation
events are
not uncommon, but they can be
dramatic.
In this telescopic view from Nanjing, Jiangsu, China,
Saturn is caught moments before
its disappearance behind the lunar disk.
The snapshot gives the illusion
that Saturn hangs just above
Glushko crater,
a
43 kilometer diameter,
young, ray crater near the Moon's western edge.
Of course, the Moon is 400 thousand kilometers away,
compared to Saturn's distance of 1.4
billion kilometers.
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NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day