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James Figge
Delmar, NY, US
03/28/2020
05:57 am

Equipment Details:

iPhone 7

Post-processing Details:

None

Image Details:

This is the third in a series of 3 images showing the relative positions of three planets in a cluster. The planets from left to right are Saturn, Mars (appearing just above the tall evergreen trees), and Jupiter (the brightest planet in the upper right). If you compare this image against my earlier posted images from approximately the same time in the morning and same location (3/22/2020, and 3/26/2020), you can clearly see how the relative position of Mars is changing with respect to Saturn and Jupiter. Mars now appears in the sky to be closer to Saturn. The Mars / Jupiter conjunction was 8 days ago on 3/20/2020. A close conjunction of these three planets is very rare. According to my research, Saturn, Mars and Jupiter have clustered like this only 8 times in the past 500 years. It is reported that a cluster like this occurred in 6 BC. See the following interesting article-
https://www.space.com/jupiter-saturn-mars-skywatching-march-2020.html

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