Brightest Objects in the Night Sky

A previous post discussed the position of Venus and Jupiter in the evening sky in late November. Soon thereafter, the Moon joined both planets in a impressive conjunction. Below is a photo a few days before the actual conjunction. Unfortunately I missed the conjunction because of overcast skies so this photo is the closest I could get.

Obviously the moon is in the lower left corner, and Venus is the brighter of the two dots in the upper right corner. The three lines to the right of the moon are from an airliner during its approach to Indianapolis Intl. Airport. I accidentally hit the tripod during this exposure so the image may look a little off.

The above photo was nearly a month ago. Since then Jupiter has drifted off into the sunset, and Venus is rising ever higher and is getting brighter. Tonight the crescent moon came back to join Venus.

The telescope is currently inside for some maintenance. Once that is complete (and the temperature moderates to something above 45 degrees) I will try to capture and process some photos of Venus. Oh, and to explain the title of this post, the Moon and Venus are the two brightest objects in the night sky.

Night Sky With Film Part II

Last summer I started to take night sky shots on a roll of slide film with my Olympus OM-1 with a fixed tripod and a homemade "barn door" mount. The barn door mount and other details of will be the subject of a later post. For now, I will present the first shot from the roll which just now got developed.

This image was taken at Whitewater Memorial State Park near Richmond, Indiana at the end of the summer. The bottom half of the photo is taken up by Sagittarius. The large bright "star" is actually Jupiter. Numerous deep sky objects can be seen in the image. I'll post a labeled version later.