Giant Leopard Moth Caterpillar

I found this caterpillar outside our front door.  It was there for several days so I took some pictures of it last night.  I looked up information on it online since I had no idea what type of caterpillar it was and found it was a Giant Leopard Moth Caterpillar which will turn into a Giant(Great) Leopard Moth.  The name giant and great are both used to name it.

Here is a short Wikipedia article on it. Giant Leopard Moth

Saturn and Titan

I managed to get this photo of Saturn tonight with my camera. I also managed to get Titan in the photo.  Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and second largest in the Solar System after Ganymede which is in orbit of Jupiter.  When this photo was taken Saturn was 10.069 AU from Earth or around 936 million miles away.

For a size comparison between Earth, the Moon, and Titan click on this link from Wikipedia. Titan is about 50% bigger than Earth's Moon and has a dense atmosphere. Titan was discovered in 1655 by the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens.

If you are curious to know how far all the other planets (including Pluto) and the Sun are from Earth right now you can go to Solar System Live.

Jupiter's Moons

I took two different pictures of Jupiter's moons tonight.  One at 8 pm and another one shortly after 11 pm.  You can see the moons changed position's in the two photos.  Note that HIP 20417 is also no longer in the photo.

Foggy Trip Home

These were taken with my IPhone while driving home after work.

Moon and Venus

Here is a picture I took several months ago when the Venus was rising and I managed to get the Moon in the same photo.

Random Photo

Just a quick post tonight. This is the inside of the state capitol building in Colorado.

Jupiter and Moons

I have another picture of Jupiter and its moons tonight.  I also need to make a slight correction regarding the photo of Jupiter last night. The star I identified as HIP 20417A can just be identified as HIP 20417 based on the photo. It is a binary system which has both HIP 20417A and HIP 20417B but they are so close together in the photo they appear as one star.  Tonight's picture has HIP 20417 again towards the top left and off to the middle-top right is HIP 20349 which lies about 167 light years away from us.  The two easily visible moons are Europa above Jupiter and Callisto below Jupiter. Io and Ganymede are really close to Jupiter's disc tonight so you cant differentiate them from Jupiter.  There was a slight indication of Io in the photo so I darkened the area where Io was in the northwestern part of Jupiter's disc.