Three in a row

I snapped this photo at 2:18 on the morning of July 21, 2022. As usual, the image quality is terrible, but it at least shows the configuration of the heavenly bodies.

That’s the Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn. I suppose it’s fairly obvious which is which. If you draw a line from Saturn to Jupiter, it passes right through the Moon. Although you can’t see it in the photo, it’s a third-quarter Moon, and the terminator runs perpendicular to the Jupiter-Saturn line, with the Saturn-ward side illuminated. The whole configuration is as geometrically precise as a crop circle.

Things like this always feel meaningful, though I struggle to conceptualize how anything as mechanical and predetermined as the motion of the planets could be meaningful. It’s the old Shining Buddha Problem, still unresolved.