Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2021 December 19

Planetary Alignment over Italy

Image Credit & Copyright: Antonio Finazzi

Explanation: It is not a coincidence that planets line up. That’s because all of the planets orbit the Sun in (nearly) a single sheet called the plane of the ecliptic. When viewed from inside that plane — as Earth dwellers are likely to do — the planets all appear confined to a single band. It is a coincidence, though, when three of the brightest planets all appear in nearly the same direction. Such a coincidence was captured earlier this month. Featured above (right to left), Venus, Saturn, and Jupiter were all imaged together in a line just after sunset, from the San Fermo Hills, Bergamo, Italy. Joining the alignment are Earth’s Moon, and the position of the more distant Uranus. Bands of clouds streak across the sky toward the setting Sun. As Comet Leonard fades, this planetary alignment — absent the Moon — should persist for the rest of the month.

Discovery + Outreach: Graduate student research position open for APOD

19 December Daily Correspondence Digest for the Southern Hemisphere’s Moon Phase and Planetary Positions

You can use this link to go forward or backward in time for Moon phase information. If you are curious you can even find out what phase the Moon was in when you or anyone else, you know was on the date the person was born.

From Moongiant.com

Today and tonight the Moon will be in a Full Moon phase. During a Full Moon the moon is 100% illuminated as seen from Earth and is on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun. The Moon will be visible throughout the night sky rising at sunset in the east and setting with the sunrise the next morning. The point at which a Full Moon occurs can be measured down to a fraction of a second. The time it takes between full moons is known as a Synodic month and is 29.530587981 days long. Keep track of all the Full Moons throughout the year on the Full Moon Calendar >

Visit the December 2021 Moon Phases Calendar to see all the daily moon phase for this month.

Today’s Full Moon Phase

The Full Moon on December 19 has an illumination of 100%. This is the percentage of the Moon illuminated by the Sun. The illumination is constantly changing and can vary up to 10% a day. On December 19 the Moon is 15.04 days old. This refers to how many days it has been since the last New Moon. It takes 29.53 days for the Moon to orbit the Earth and go through the lunar cycle of all 8 Moon phases.

The 8 Lunar Phases

There are 8 lunar phases the Moon goes through in its 29.53 days lunar cycle. The 4 major Moon phases are Full Moon, New Moon, First Quarter and Last Quarter. Between these major phases, there are 4 minor ones: the Waxing Crescent, Waxing Gibbous, Waning Gibbous and Waning Crescent. For more info on the Moon Cycle and on each phase check out Wikipedia Lunar Phase page.

Phase Details For – December 19

Phase: Full Moon
Illumination: 100%
Moon Age: 15.04 days
Moon Angle: 0.49
Moon Distance: 404,809.44 km
Sun Angle: 0.54
Sun Distance: 147,177,418.30 km

Useful Moon Resources

Check the weather before a night of Moon gazing at weather.com

For a list of all the current meteor showers visit American Meteor Society

If you need to calculate the planetary positions for a specific use and time, click on this link

Currentplanetarypositions.com

To figure out GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) to your local time use this link

For Your Local Time and Date

Southeastern Hemisphere

The time for the Custom Planetary Positions is from the local time in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

19 December 2021
06:00 am GMT 5:00 PM AEDT
Zodiac: Tropical (Standard Western)

Sun:27 Sagittarius 32
Moon:28 Gemini 11
Mercury:08 Capricorn 40
Venus:26 Capricorn 29
Mars:04 Sagittarius 05
Jupiter:28 Aquarius 12
Saturn:10 Aquarius 35
Uranus:11 Taurus 12 Rx
Neptune:20 Pisces 30
Pluto:25 Capricorn 32
True Lunar Node:01 Gemini 39 Rx
Mean Lunar Node:00 Gemini 12 Rx
Lilith (Black Moon):17 Gemini 03
Chiron:08 Aries 26 Rx
Ceres:00 Gemini 22 Rx
Pallas:13 Pisces 34
Juno:12 Capricorn 29
Vesta:17 Sagittarius 39
Eris:23 Aries 44 Rx

Fire:5
Earth:5
Air:7
Water:2

Cardinal:6
Fixed:3
Mutable:10

Southwestern Hemisphere

The time for the Custom Planetary Positions is from the local time in Sao Paulo, Brazil, South America

19 December 2021
08:00 pm GMT 5:00 PM BRT
Zodiac: Tropical (Standard Western)

Sun:28 Sagittarius 08
Moon:05 Cancer 06
Mercury:09 Capricorn 35
Venus:26 Capricorn 29 Rx
Mars:04 Sagittarius 30
Jupiter:28 Aquarius 18
Saturn:10 Aquarius 39
Uranus:11 Taurus 12 Rx
Neptune:20 Pisces 30
Pluto:25 Capricorn 33
True Lunar Node:01 Gemini 37 Rx
Mean Lunar Node:00 Gemini 10 Rx
Lilith (Black Moon):17 Gemini 07
Chiron:08 Aries 26
Ceres:00 Gemini 16 Rx
Pallas:13 Pisces 41
Juno:12 Capricorn 42
Vesta:17 Sagittarius 58
Eris:23 Aries 44 Rx

Fire:5
Earth:5
Air:6
Water:3

Cardinal:7
Fixed:3
Mutable:9

Good Day or Evening

I hope this finds everyone healthy and happy. I want to apologize for all the missing posts from yesterday, and today. I catch a cold from my fiancee and it kicked my body into sleepy, healing mode. I do not feel up to sitting at my computer so I am using my Kindle Fire Tablet to do posts which is a real challenge as I can only see about 1/3 on the screen as I usually do.

For those of you in the Southern Hemisphere I will get your Moon phase and current planetary positions for tomorrow posted today.

Hopefully, I will get all regular daily, weekly, and full Moon posts up tomorrow. I will try to get the full Moon posts up in time for them to be useful everywhere on Gaia.

Thank you all for your “prayers” and candles for my youngest son! While he is not out of the dark places in his mind completely he is doing much better. I am very great ful to all of you who helped him during his darkest days.

Now to do daily and birthday horoscopes along with Moon phase and planetary positions posts than it is back to sleep for me to let my body heal.