Moon and Venus this morning

A hastily grabbed shot through a break in a rainy sky at 0520 this morning...



Enjoy!

Sweet. How many seconds was that? 2 seconds? Earthshine is so prominent, the sky must have been very transparent and frigid after the rain.

Seanie.

You're bang on there Seanie - 2 seconds it was, f4 and 70mm ISO200. The sky wasn't as good as it looks there - a lot of moisture even in the gaps between the rainclouds. A pretty sight though - Saturn and Regulus were positioned just above this pair - Mercury was too low to see.

I admired the sight at 7.15.

I remember thinking that Venus looked remarkably high in the sky.

Peter.

I saw them too, around 7, looked stunning from where I was I have to say! Venus looked incredibly bright, even more so than usual. Was that Saturn I could see towards the East at the same time?

Jen

The high elevation this morning has to do with the tilt of the Earth’s axis of course.

In Spring a morning enlongation of Venus has the planet to the side the sun in the sky.

There is a relatively shallow angle between the line of the horizon and the line connecting the sun and Venus.

On Autumn mornings Venus appears above the sun and away from the horizon.
The sun-Venus line is tilted at a much greater angle to our horizon these mornings.

Peter.