Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Five, Count 'em, Five Solar System Objects

It was a tough shot...the Moon is only one day past old. Mercury is nearby, both close to the horizon in the fading glow of twilight. Venus, Mars and Saturn are higher in a darker sky. Can you balance all the competing lighting levels in this photo? Well, a professional photographer might be able to do a better job...I was just barely able to do it. You are going to want to click to embiggen...and I put the full size file here this time for you.

The bright one toward the top is Venus, Saturn to its upper right and Mars to its upper left. Now look at the slender crescent Moon toward the bottom. Look to the upper right of the Moon and just above the cloud is a little dot...that's Mercury! Yep, Jupiter is the only one missing from this party.

Since Mercury is hard to see in that pic, I am going to include another one with the Moon and Mercury zoomed in a bit here.


Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicist Blog.

2 comments:

OrbsCorbs said...

Very well done, hale. Considering the light levels, that's an amazing shot.

kkdither said...

I think you did an amazing job, hale. Thanks!