Crescent Moon with Saturn, Jupiter ... and Rocket Trails

June 10, 1999, 4:22 a.m., Phoenix, Arizona

Sometimes getting up early yields unexpected surprises!

On this day, I went outside an hour before sunrise to photograph the Saturn - Crescent Moon - Jupiter arrangement in the east, and was pleasantly surprised to also see some iridescent spiral rocket trails. I learned later that these were from a test of a Theater High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile, which hit and destroyed a Hera test rocket in flight over the White Sands missile range in New Mexico. Since White Sands is about 300 miles from Phoenix, the rockets must have been at considerable altitude to appear so high in the sky!

Saturn and Jupiter were about 15 degrees apart at this time, but were gradually drawing closer. In late May of the year 2000, they were only one degree apart!

This photograph appeared on NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day site on July 14, 1999.

Camera: Olympus OM-1 on fixed tripod
Film: Fuji Provia 100 slide
Lens: 50mm
Aperture: f/2.8
Exposure time: 10 seconds
Scanned with Nikon Coolscan LS-10E