This past week has been an exciting one for star gazers. Last Monday, Jupiter made its closest approach to the Earth in 50 years. Celestial distances are measured in AU – astronomical units. One AU is about 93,000,000 miles, the distance from the Earth to the sun. Jupiter is about 3.95 AU from the Earth. Tuesday night at 8pm, Jupiter was in opposition, that is it was directly opposite the sun. Five hours later, at 1am Tuesday morning, Uranus (19.1 AU from the earth) took its turn in opposition.

At 3pm Tuesday afternoon, Jupiter and Uranus were aligned, meaning they were less than 1 degree apart in the sky. Just after sunset, they rose together and were visible with the aid of a pair of good binoculars or a small telescope.

Fall arrived Wednesday night when the sun crossed the celestial equator at 11:09pm, with the autumnal equinox. Equinox means “equal nights”. Wednesday, day and night each were 12 hours long everywhere on Earth.

Finally, Thursday morning around 4:30am brought us an event that only occurs every 19 years: a Super Harvest Moon. A harvest moon is the full moon that occurs closest to the autumnal equinox, usually in late September or early October. A Super Harvest Moon occurs on the same night as the equinox. Then Thursday night the moon, Jupiter, and Uranus rose together and were all visible (with binoculars.)

So that boys and girls is our science lesson for this week. Pretty cool, huh? But let’s not forget some of the other aspects of a harvest moon, particularly the romance. Surely at some point in your life you’ve taken a blanket outside under the moon for a little slap and tickle? Here’s a little ditty to bring back some of those memories.