A Happy Family

I have been taking a ton of photos these past few weeks, and I have a huge backlog of them. I though I would do a bit of a different post today and put up a few photos instead of just one. Here are Photos of five of the planets in our solar system.

First up is Venus, the second planet from the sun. I took this picture with my little 4 inch scope on the night of the meteor shower recently. You can clearly see the fact that it is a crescent, being lit from the sun from the left side of the picture.

Next up is Uranus. This is one of the gas giants far out in the outer solar system. You can see a few little dots just to the right of the planet. Those are some of its moons. Most of Uranus' moons are named after characters from Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.

The next planet out is Neptune. Here we can see Neptune and its largest moon Triton. Neptune is the 8th and last planet from the sun.

One in from Uranus is Saturn, the 6th planet, and most peoples favorite. Unfortunately I never had a chance to take a really good photo of Saturn although I did see it looking excellent many times. On a good night you can see storms on the planet, and the gap between the rings and the planet itself!

I have put Jupiter, the 5th planet from the sun last because I think this is the best picture. I took this yesterday morning. You can clearly see the different bands of color on the planet itself, as well as the four moon all on one side at that moment.

To complete the set, we still need Mars, Mercury and Earth, the 4th, 1st and 3rd planets respectively. I have never had a chance to image Mars or Mercury through the telescope, and we are on earth, but I have captured them in pictures.

Here is Mars, the red planet, now with curiosity exploring away on its surface. This is an ancient photo of mine, but it is the only one I could find with Mars in It which is weird. Mars is the reddish dot high in the center of the frame.

And last but not least in any way is Mercury. Saturday morning was in fact the first morning I have actually taken a picture of Mercury. The little rocky planet is hard to capture because it is so small and close to the sun. If you go straight up from the top of the mountain - Mt Baker on planet earth to be exact - and slightly to the left up to just before the sky starts turning blue, you will find a tiny white dot which is Mercury.

Out of all of these planets, I still think that my favourite is a planet we call Earth.

And that concludes todays post. I hope you enjoyed!