Starship Asterisk*

Conjunction by the Sea

Explanation: Early morning risers were treated to a beautiful conjunction of Venus and waning Crescent Moon on June 24, captured in this seaside photo near Belmar, New Jersey, USA, planet Earth. The serene celestial pairing is seen above the Atlantic Ocean horizon as the eastern sky grows brighter with dawn's early light. Wispy, scattered clouds appear in silhouette. But the exposure also reveals the night side of the lunar orb in the arms of the sunlit crescent. That shadowed part of the Moon, with hints of the smooth, dark lunar seas or maria, is illuminated by Earthshine, sunlight reflected from planet Earth itself.

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What's that bright red line with the moon's reflection on the water?

Beyond wrote:What's that bright red line with the moon's reflection on the water?

Do you have any red port left? Tis a navigation light on a small boat.

Nitpicker wrote:

Beyond wrote:What's that bright red line with the moon's reflection on the water?

Do you have any red port left? Tis a navigation light on a small boat.

No port, but i just might have some 'star' boards. Yeah, i know, terri-bull. But who wudda thought that a little boat with a red light would just happen to come along and merge with the moon's reflection on the water, just as someone's taking a picture of it?

Nitpicker wrote:

Beyond wrote:What's that bright red line with the moon's reflection on the water?

Do you have any red port left? Tis a navigation light on a small boat.

Wow, so the identification flow chart was right.

geckzilla wrote:

Nitpicker wrote:

Beyond wrote:What's that bright red line with the moon's reflection on the water?

Do you have any red port left? Tis a navigation light on a small boat.

Wow, so the identification flow chart was right.

You think I just guessed?

I saw the same thing walking my dog tuesday morning but it wasnt nearly as pretty.

Something seems to be wrong here. Isn't New Jersey on the East side of the U.S.? If so, the Moon and Venus seem to be rising from the Atlantic and the Sun would be setting on the Western horizon. The illumination of the pier from the Sun is from the left.

Larryc1 wrote:Something seems to be wrong here. Isn't New Jersey on the East side of the U.S.? If so, the Moon and Venus seem to be rising from the Atlantic and the Sun would be setting on the Western horizon. The illumination of the pier from the Sun is from the left.

Nothing is wrong. This is a sunrise, not a sunset.

Larryc1 wrote:Something seems to be wrong here. Isn't New Jersey on the East side of the U.S.? If so, the Moon and Venus seem to be rising from the Atlantic and the Sun would be setting on the Western horizon. The illumination of the pier from the Sun is from the left.

A thin crescent Moon is only possible when the Sun and Moon are close together. The lighting of the Moon here tells us that the Sun is just below the horizon, to the left of the Moon, and rising with it.

It is so difficult to find good timber any more. The newer piles are a lot thinner than the original ones. The only second-growth forests I know of are in protected parks, towering over a hundred feet overhead with trunks you can't put your arms around. Perhaps if that kind of lumber were used at the end of the pier, it wouldn't be blocked off and dangling for the next storm-driven wave to carry it away. They can make cell-phone towers look like palm trees; steel piers covered with hollowed-out lumber might maintain the beauty and preserve its presence. [New Jersey would need a huge loan from Donald Trump to pay for that.] Still, when storm-driven waves crash into the end of such a pier, I doubt if even steel could stand up to that kind of force. That's what snaps freighters in two to sink without a trace (rogue waves are created when flying saucers land in the Bermuda Triangle - sez so on the Internet, so it must be true;-).

It was quite the sight to see Venus then the crescent rise through the treetops over the mountains here through a telephoto lens. It's probably not often that it would be clear enough to see that occur over the ocean on the horizon. We often have clouds here let alone on the sea. The mountains rise to around 7000 feet to the east here. There is not as much atmosphere to peer through to see the moon rising in the background as it first appears to sight.

Thanks to Mike Black for being prepared to capture it photographically for all to see. Question though - conjunction or an appulse? Maybe both?

If you have not clicked the link "dawn's early light" on today's page, you have missed out. Thank you APOD for that treat!

Nancy

Awesome...and romantic....no doubt....


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just read elsewhere an amateur astronomer photographed a " damocloid " and explained it is an asteroid behaving like a comet. WOW, and I thought I knew everything.

ta152h0 wrote:just read elsewhere an amateur astronomer photographed a " damocloid " and explained it is an asteroid behaving like a comet. WOW, and I thought I knew everything.

An asteroid in a comet-like orbit. And the one that got imaged recently actually is a comet... it's now got a tail.

Ron-Astro Pharmacist wrote:Question though - conjunction or an appulse? Maybe both?

Is you apply a sufficiently large tolerance to the RA, then it is a conjunction.

From New Jersey, Venus could not easily be observed much closer to the Moon during this lunation, so it could also be called an appulse, or very nearly.

Nitpicker wrote:

Ron-Astro Pharmacist wrote:Question though - conjunction or an appulse? Maybe both?

Is you apply a sufficiently large tolerance to the RA, then it is a conjunction.

From New Jersey, Venus could not easily be observed much closer to the Moon during this lunation, so it could also be called an appulse, or very nearly.

From Belmar, the conjunction occurred at ~6:52am (2½ hours after the photo) and the appulse afterward at ~8:12am. I think describing this image as a conjunction is more appropriate (at least I like it better).

alter-ego wrote:

Nitpicker wrote:

Ron-Astro Pharmacist wrote:Question though - conjunction or an appulse? Maybe both?

Is you apply a sufficiently large tolerance to the RA, then it is a conjunction.

From New Jersey, Venus could not easily be observed much closer to the Moon during this lunation, so it could also be called an appulse, or very nearly.

From Belmar, the conjunction occurred at ~6:52am (2½ hours after the photo) and the appulse afterward at ~8:12am. I think describing this image as a conjunction is more appropriate (at least I like it better).

You are quite correct ... but if you instead think of it in discrete terms, based on observations from night to night, then this APOD shows the night of both the appulse and conjunction of Venus and the Moon, for this lunation. Once the Sun is up, it becomes difficult to observe Venus. Like you, I would probably apply the term "conjunction" loosely, before I would do the same with the term "appulse".

I like how in the image's Exif information that was available through the APOD image properties that it has a view showing the location on the beach where the image was taken from.