Venus, Jupiter and the super duper blood wolf moon

In the last few days, the pre-dawn sky has been filled with a wonderful sight of Venus closing in on Jupiter and then moving away. I had been trying to pull myself out of bed at 6.15am so that by 6.45am, I could position myself at my back door to watch the two planets as the day gradually grew lighter. My only problem was that despite the planets shining brightly, I needed to hold the camera as still as possible and slow down the shutter speed to a quarter (¼) second or even slower. Even then, Venus and Jupiter appeared only as dim dots.

21st of January at 6.38am

The smaller dot is Jupiter. It is much farther away from the earth than Venus and thus would move relatively slower in the sky. Thus, if the two planets are viewed over several days, Venus would seem to have overtaken Jupiter. The bonus over the last few days was that a small number of the pictures were clearer than the bulk of them and when I digitally enlarged and processed the dimmer Jupiter, I could make out the four Galilean moons. Magnificent, indeed. But of course, this wasn't the first time that I had managed to see the four main moons of Jupiter. I've been writing about them since 2015.

23rd January at 6.52am

The first full moon of 2019 that we saw on the 20th of January happened to be loosely described by space enthusiasts as a super blood wolf moon. (But they missed out on the word "duper" as in super duper blood wolf moon.) A Wolf moon is the first full moon of the year. A Blood moon is an eclipsed moon when the colour turns rust red as it hides in the earth's shadow. And a Super moon happens when its orbit takes it closest to the earth, thus making the moon's size looking bigger than normal. Writers tend to get excited when they are able to string several words together.

Yes, there was a lunar eclipse on night of the 20th but unfortunately, it was not visible from this part of the world. The Americans would have seen it but not us. For us, the moon remained just a full moon on the 20th of January. But it was also the last full moon of the Chinese lunar calendar because come 05 February 2019, we shall be celebrating Chinese New Year, the Year of the Pig. Happy Chinese New Year, everyone!

This picture of the full moon was taken on the 20th January at 8.52pm.

And this picture was taken on the 23rd January at 7.35am