July 27, 2024
Another year older means another lap aboard a world spinning through the void at impossible speed.
Saturn at the Moon's Edge
Birthday · July 27, 2024
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APOD published July 27, 2024. Credit: Chengcheng Xu. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
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.
Image credit: Chengcheng Xu