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Position mouse cursor over the image to see a labelled image.
Move mouse cursor off the image to see the normal image.
The planets put on great shows throughout the years as they change position in the sky relative to each other as seen from Earth. Our moon is also a member of this celestial artist's palette. The morning I took this photograph provided an opportunity for the planets to show the ecliptic which is roughly the plane of the solar system. Technically only the Earth and the Sun lie exactly on the ecliptic and the orbits of the other planets lie at slightly different angles from it. Put the mouse cursor over the image to see labels of the objects in the photograph.
I took this photograph with my Minolta DiMAGE A1 digital camera on a fixed tripod in Chandler, Arizona at 5:19am on the morning of 12 September 2004. The exposure was 8 seconds at f/3.5 with the camera set for ISO 100 in RAW mode. Adobe Photoshop CS was used to perform the RAW conversion. Photograph by Rick Scott.
Updated: 13 September 2004