In the latter part of June and early July Venus and Jupiter aligned closer and closer together until they nearly appeared to be one point of light. In New York City, the skies were cloudy after this night, so this was the closest alignment I got to see.
This picture is both a miracle and a demonstration of how NOT to do astro-photography. This was taken hand-held with a manual zoom, manual focus 60 – 300mm lens at f/5.6 and 1/10. The right way is to set the camera on a tripod, and do long exposures using either a remote or the built-in timer to set the camera off.
But, the picture was good enough to reveal the following:
- Over 75% of each planet was actually obscured. The illuminated side of each planet was to the right of where the sun had set on the horizon.
- The larger, closer, purple point is Venus. The further, greener one is Jupiter.
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