The first full moon of 2026 occurs at 3:04 am MST on 3 January. The picture below was taken at 8:25 pm MST on 2 January, a little more than 6-1/2 hr before maximum. The full moon of January is traditionally known as the "Wolf Moon".
Equipment: Astro-Tech AT72EDII f/6 refractor and Olympus E-M5iii camera.
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| The Wolf Moon |
The planet Uranus was the first planet discovered in modern times, by William Herschel in 1781. It is currently located in the sky near the Pleiades star cluster, which makes it an easy object to locate and view with binoculars. The image below is a 1-deg FOV centered on Uranus:
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| Uranus (center). 1-deg FOV. |
Much to my surprise, this 20-sec exposure also recorded the two largest moons of Uranus. Here is a 1/4-deg FOV enlarged from this image:
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| Uranus (center) and two of its moons. 2x enlargement. |
The two faint "stars" nearest to the overexposed image of Uranus are its moons Titania (left) and Oberon (right). These moons were also discovered by William Herschel, in 1787. They are both slightly less than half the size of our moon, but immensely farther away. Our moon is 1.2 light-seconds distant, but Uranus and its moons is 2.6 light-hours away.
Here is a chart showing the location of these moons:
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| credit: SkySafariAstronomy.com |
According to SkySafari, Titania is currently magnitude 13.8 and Oberon is magnitude 14.0.
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| A 3x enlargement |
Where to look for Uranus:
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| credit: SkySafariAstronomy.com |
So cool!!
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