Photo: Jerry Lodriguss
Jerry Lodriguss, digital astrophotographer, captured this stunning image of our Moon passing close to the planet Mars on July 5, 2014.
The Moon and Mars were separated by 18.88 arcminutes from limb to limb (34 min 23 sec center-to-center) at 9:52 p.m. EDT (1:52 UT on July 6) at their closest approach.
Mars subtended an apparent angle of 9.16 arcseconds while the Moon had an apparent diameter of 1847.71 arcseconds. The Moon was just a couple of hours past first quarter at the time.
This is a high-dynamic range composite of nine images shot at one stop increments from 1/4 second to 1/1000th second at ISO 800 at f/6.3.
