Moon and Saturn had a close encounter tonight, August 20, 2024. Okay, the two orbs were about 809 million miles apart but they were close in the sky. I shot this image as early as I could, shooting through a narrow gap in the trees, with a telephoto lens and not a big ole telescope (which I’d have preferred). Still, there they were, together in our night sky, and here they are, a glowing pockmarked moon, and a distant and giant ringed world in one picture. Where is Saturn? It’s that tiny amber dot — a few pixels in size — above the lunar disk. Saturn’s ring plane is seen nearly on-edge now making the planet visually even smaller. — Photo by James Guilford
Stella-Luna Observatory 