"Explanation: Early morning risers around the world have enjoyed the sight of bright planets in this week's predawn skies - further enhanced by the celestial spectacle of the waning crescent Moon. From some locations the Moon was seen to pass in front of Jupiter or Venus, a lunar occultation. Recorded near sunrise on November 10th from Shiraz, Iran, this eastern horizon view finds Jupiter (top) and a brilliant Venus in line with the Moon, a lovely conjunction of the three brightest objects in the night sky. Although the Moon has now fallen out of the early morning scene, Venus and Jupiter (along with a much fainter Mars) still precede the rising Sun above the eastern horizon."

Full pic (Not 56k friendly): http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/im...karimi_full.jpg

its beautiful. i've only seen mars from where i live. its always been a real faint red glow right next to the moon. around here is so bad for seeing things. everytime there's a meteor shower, its cloudy. an eclipse, its cloudy. the last cool thing i've seen was the northern lights about a week ago. i took pics, but they probably didnt turn out.

there are times like these i wish i lived in some country pasteurs by the plains somewhere where there are no city lights, honking horns, or pollution .. and tall buildings..

that's awesome... i was driving over a lake when the lunar eclipse happened .. it was very beautiful. i also like those nice clear nights when i can see the stars while i am driving home. and the blue sky looks awesome too.

Ahh the wonders of living in a village with no street lights.


Shame I live in a city.

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very cool, i love occurances like this
like, when mars and saturn were showing up quite well last year. i was out there in the farm lands with a telescope!!.. beautiful.

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Originally posted by goodgreefgirl very cool, i love occurances like this like, when mars and saturn were showing up quite well last year. i was out there in the farm lands with a telescope!!.. beautiful.

That's cool. During the blackout last year, Mars was highly visible here on the west part of Long Island.

Also, since a few planets were unusually close last year, I was able to take a close up gander at them at my college's observatory (Stony Brook). Gorgeous stuff.

One of my goals in life is to go to Alaska and camp under the most beautiful aurora borealis display ever.

Damn those things are so out of this world

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i always know that venus is the "star" that is always brightest and closest to the moon. i wish i have one of those 2000 dollar computer telescopes they got for sale in the discovery channel store.

did they just recently discover a new planet, but they dont know whether to call it a plant because its smaller than pluto.

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Originally posted by ::TranceVanDyk:: did they just recently discover a new planet, but they dont know whether to call it a plant because its smaller than pluto.

Yea, the new planet is called 'Sedna' after the Inuit Goddess of the sea, and was discovered back in March of this year. Its status as a planet is tentative, as it's truly just a big, spherical rock in outer-space (as is Pluto), so a lot fo people will say that it's not a planet so much as it is just a part of the Kuiper belt that happens to be within visible vicinity of our Solar System.

But it's a planet, goddamnit!

I live out in the Florida 'countryside' it seems (only though I'm just about 10 minutes from downtown ) and it can get absolutely pitch-black out here. Living in Florida, we get cloud-cover and haze at night, but there's been some nights when I can see much of the Milky Way and tons of shooting stars.

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Anything smaller than the Earth's moon is not considered a planet.

I didn't think size was an issue. I thought the only difference was that planets rotated around the sun, and the moons rotated around planets. Since there are moons rotating around Saturn and Jupiter that are larger than Earth.

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Originally posted by Ondrayce I didn't think size was an issue. I thought the only difference was that planets rotated around the sun, and the moons rotated around planets. Since there are moons rotating around Saturn and Jupiter that are larger than Earth.

Size is a factor, as can be seen with the farther out planetoids.

The fact that the moons revolve around planets and NOT around the sun works along with the size factor to distiniguish what is and isn't a planet. Check out NASA newsreports for the concrete info.