Observatory Aligned with Moon Occulting Jupiter
Sometimes we witness the
Moon moving directly in front of -- called occulting -- one of the planets in our
Solar System.
Earlier this month that planet was Jupiter.
Captured here was the moment when
Jupiter re-appeared from
behind the surface of our Moon.
The Moon was in its
third quarter, two days before the dark
New Moon.
Now, our
Moon is continuously
half lit by the Sun, but when in its third quarter,
relatively little of that half can be seen from the
Earth.
Pictured, the Moon itself was aligned behind the famous
Lick Observatory in
California,
USA,
on the summit of
Mount Hamilton.
Coincidentally, Lick enabled the discovery of a moon of Jupiter:
Amalthea, the last visually detected moon of Jupiter after
Galileo's
observations.