Moon and Venus

Venus was very close to the Moon in the evening sky this week.
I made some artsy images of the celestial phenomenon.  Here smoke
from a nearby wildfire caused a kind of orange glow around the crescent
Moon and Venus.  Venus is always brighter than any star with its greatest luminosity
being -4.9.  It fades to about a magnitude -3 when it is backlit by the sun.
Venus is bright enough to be seen in the middle of the day when the sky is very clear.
This image was made with a 300 mm lens and a 30 second exposure.

Here a cloud and some smoke plus a passing jetliner interfered with my shot
of the Moon and Venus.  I thought it made a kind of interesting presentation
despite the flaws in the execution of the image.
At any given time there are dozens of jetliners passing overhead.  In this
25 second exposure I accidentally captured the running lights of the jetliner.
Click on this or any other image for a larger view.

The Moon begins to appear full the longer the lens of the camera is open.
This 15 second exposure reveals that the Moon was actually only a
thin crescent at the time the image was created.
The closest possible distance between Earth and Venus is
38 million km (23,600,000 miles).  The farthest that Venus ever
gets from Earth is 261 million km (162,200,000 miles)

Here a cloud gave the Moon a sun-like glow.  Venus also caused
some reflection on the lens that ruined this otherwise nice shot of the event.
Venus will periodically pass across the face of the sun.  This event it called a transit.
The next transit will occur on June 6, 2012. . . it will be the last time for
over 100 years that this phenomenon can be viewed. .. so mark your calendars
and prepare your telescopes.

Two passing jets clutter this 20 second exposure of Venus and the Moon.
Venus is now far from the Moon in the early evening sky. . . however. . . Jupiter
is now approaching the Moon. . . though Jupiter does not appear quite as bright
as Venus due to its distance from Earth.  At their closest. . . Jupiter and Earth
are almost 629 million km apart (almost 391 million miles).
At their most distant they are over 928 million km apart (almost 577 million miles).

Check out HUBBLESITE for much better images of the planets and stars.

Unrelated to the Moon and Venus is Dell-Roy Jackson. . . sitting on his iPad and
looking at his iPhone.  He loves the iPad cover and is not happy unless I put
it on the counter so he can lay on it.  He's a big boy. . . that's a full-sized stove
that he's sitting atop.

Today was another very warm and mostly-sunny day in Florida.  The temperature
climbed into the mid-70°s F (24° C).  We spent most of the late afternoon
painting the west side of the lake house.  I hope to finish that project before
really hot weather returns to Florida.