MOON 4 DEGREES TO LEFT OF MARS IN DAWN SKY MONDAY - TOMORROW!!

[paulastro]

The Moon, (waning crescent, 9.7% illuminated) rises around 5 am tomorrow depending on your location.  Four degrees to the East of it, and slightly lower in the sky, is Mars (m+1.6, 4.2 arcseconds ).  Civil dawn is at 7.41 am and by then the Moon is around 16 degrees altitude.  Don't delay too long as the thin crescent Moon will be harder to see as the daylight increases.  Find the Moon earlier if you can when it is in a darker sky, it will make the conjunction more dramatic, and there should be earthshine also of course.

A great opportunity to see a thin crescent Moon and perhaps have your first view of Mars as it marches on to its very favourable opposition next October, if you haven't already seen it since it came into the morning sky.

 

Edited December 22, 2019 by paulastro

[Davey-T]

Usually try to catch these events as I have a good east horizon from the bedroom window, CO is forecasting clear, mind you it's saying clear and raining ATM but it's neither just cloudy 😂

Dave 

[paulastro]

Go for it Dave.  My forecast is mixed, two out of three (Met Interactive Weather Map and the BBC  Weather App) indicate I haven't got a dog's chance and the one (AccuWeather) indicating intermittent cloud.  Forever optimistic I'll be up and giving it a chance anyway.  If you don't buy at ticket............

Good luck to you tomorrow, let us know how you get on Dave.

[Davey-T]

3 minutes ago, paulastro said:

Good luck to you tomorrow, let us know how you get on Dave.

Definitely be having a try, will get a snapshot if it's clear.

Dave

[CentaurZ]

Wow.

Edited December 23, 2019 by CentaurZ

[Davey-T]

Up at 5 o'clock nothing to see only clouds, going back to bed now.

Dave 

[Pete Presland]

Pretty cloudy here as well, might get a look on the way to work though, you never know 🙂 

[Pete Presland]

Had a lovely view of it from 6.15 onwards. Even managedto get a couple of photos :-) 

[paulastro]

Set up outside with my SW 80 ED (to photograph the Moon) at 6am and waited in a mostly heavily clouded sky. Despite heavy cloud and frequent heavy showers managed to first get a look for about 10 seconds with my 10x50 Nikon binoculars at 7.09 am.  Between heavy rain (during which I sheltered in my car) I had a l longer view at 7.25 and again at 7.40 before the cold, rain and complete cloud cover finally drove me indoors.

Looked beautiful with  ruddy Mars about four degrees to the right of the fine waning crescent with beautiful earthshine, fantastic.  Really well worth the effort. 

Pleased to get a few Moon pics  also (planning to photograph the Moon was how I found out that Mars was so close to the Moon last night) and I'll post a couple later on Lunar Imaging.

[Rob]

I saw this while walking the dog this morning!. Lovely sight, and cracking Earth shine..

[Stu]

Thanks for the heads up Paul. Somewhat disturbed night with a little one with a cold, so only managed to spot the crescent moon between clouds at about 7.30. Still nice, don't often see it in this phase.

[AdeKing]

Set the alarm for about 06:45 and looked out of the bedroom window which looks due east and could see the moon in a hole in the clouds but with larger gaps moving in the right direction.

I nipped downstairs to get the binoculars out of the garage and got a great view, of the crescent moon with loads of earthshine with the orangey Mars to the  southwest.

Really was well worth the effort, thanks for the heads up.  

[Davey-T]

Looks like the only cloud here was at the wrong moment, stayed up until 3.00 am imaging in a nice clear sky, got up at 5.00am to clouds which cleared just after sunrise, nice sunny day now

Dave 

[Pete Presland]

Looked very nice later against the blue sky as well. 

[Paz]

I saw this by chance putting the bins out this morning - a very pretty moon with some stars bright enough to see nearby. I didn't realise one of them was Mars!

The earthshine was very obvious. With an 8x42 monocular I could see features on the dark side and also a lot of terminator action towards both poles.

[bish]

Luckily my wife went out early and told me the moon was looking nice. I grabbed my bins to look at the crescent moon and Mars was in the same FOV.