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Greeeeetings from the beautiful Crete! I just came back from one week vacation with my family. We spent one week in Chania in Crete island. Oh boy, Crete is a wonderful place to take it relaxed. For sure I recommend Crete to anybody. And I didn’t even mention the Greek food.. Delicious!

So, what my vacation in Crete has to do with astronomy? Last Friday night I was having a dinner with my family in the village of Platanias in Crete. I noticed that the Moon was almost 100% covered by the shadow of itself (not like during a full lunar eclipse when it’s covered by the shadow of the Earth). I told my five-year old son and he was amazed with the beauty of the waxing crescent Moon. On our way back home I recognized that there is actually something more interesting next to the Moon. Castor and Pollux were lined with the Moon.

The Moon happened to be located next to constellation Gemini, and Gemini’s bright stars Pollux (beta Gemini) and Castor (alpha Gemini) were set in line with the Moon. The straight line of those three celestial elements did really look wonderful in the eyes of an amateur astronomer. Next night I noticed that the Moon was much higher in the sky in relation to constellation Gemini. I was lucky to see this phenomenon.

Unfortunately I had no camera on that night, so I decided to run a simulation back home and add screen captures to this article. I ran the simulation on Stellarium software which is absolutely the best simulation program I have ever used. Check out the three pictures included in this article. The sky above Crete on last Friday did look exactly like in those pictures. The second picture is a close-up of the Moon, Pollux and Castor. Third picture is a close-up of the Moon. I wanted you to see how pretty the waxing crescent Moon did look.

As you can see I haven’t written much lately in this blog. The reason is that the sun doesn’t set anymore here in Finland and therefore I haven’t been stargazing lately. Nights in Crete are dark and I found myself lying on beach on night time and watching the awesome and beautiful universe above me. Aren’t we small? Isn’t this universe amazing? Man, I must say it really keeps on amazing me.

Notice that also in EarthSky’s article the waxing crescent Moon, Pollux and Castor are almost lined up.