10/17/20

 Today's images and post is a bit different.  Mars has been visible in the sky for awhile now.  Last month there was one evening when it and the moon were fairly close together so I was able to capture both.  You can see the reddish tint to Mars even though it's rather small in the image.

This image is a complimentary image I was able to get this week.  It's a bit disappointing as it is a phone shot and I guess I still need to learn how to use it because when I changed the mode I shot in, it did not give me a RAW file to work with, just a low grade jpeg.  Anyway, this is the moon and Venus from Wednesday morning.

10/29/15

So we had our first cold night and fairly chilly day.  Winter is on it's way.   I mentioned several posts ago that one of the only good things about getting up early to go to work is the beautiful skies I get to see but don't get to photograph.  Well,  I made time on a couple of occasions to try and get an image of the Planet Convergence that was happening this year in the past couple of weeks.  I think at one point they were a lot closer together than I ever saw them but I obviously did not get that.  I did however, get this image.  My first tries did not turn out well at all.  I was surprised to see how much they moved during a long exposure but afterwards when I thought about it, it does make sense since they are much closer than stars.  Anyway, on Monday, it was clear out and I tried again with different types of settings and succeeded.  I liked how the star patterns from only reflected light were created by my lens.  I believe the brightest one is Venus.  When I look at this image I am reminded of a line from a song by Paul McCartney and Wings, "Venus and Mars (and Jupiter) are alright tonight".  :-)  I believe Venus is the one that looks most star-like.