Moon, Venus, and City Lights

At conjunction: Moon and Venus floating over city lights and in light pollution.

I was disappointed with my previous efforts at recording an earlier close passage of our Moon and Venus (Moon, Mars, and Venus had been “dancing” in our evening skies over the past month.). The Moon’s orbit, however, gave me a second chance on a night when the sky was pretty clear. Pretty cold, too, at an unseasonable 23F (March 22).

Crescent Moon, Earthlight, and Stars

Nonetheless, I braved the temperatures and, using two different Canon camera bodies, got shots of the combo first in twilight, later in a dark sky. Well, the sky here isn’t really all that dark, but it was pretty good. Some shots I exposed to get some detail in the lighted portion of the thin, waxing crescent Moon; others I exposed to record the Earthshine portion of Luna’s disk. A short telephoto gave me a nice nighttime landscape, whereas a long telephoto (400mm) won a good image of crescent Luna with an Earthlit shadowed disk and stars floating in the sky nearby. The late shots I took from a vantage point that overlooked the lights of a nearby city whose glow put power lines and their towers into silhouette.

All-in-all, I’m pleased with the night’s efforts; it was worth the stinging redness in my fingers and my cold, cold toes getting those images.