Tuesday, December 2, 2008

A Celestial Summit Meeting

To quote the Hayden Planetarium, "Every once in a while, something will appear in the night sky that will attract the attention of even those who normally don't bother looking up". Yesterday evening was just such an evening. A slender crescent Moon, just 15% illuminated, hung in our evening sky in very close proximity to Venus and Jupiter.





I must say I'm pretty impressed with my photograph. These things are very hard to capture and it was much more impressive in real life, but you get the idea....


Additionally, if you enlarge my photo, I have successfully captured another phenomenon called Earthshine, Earthshine was first recognized by Leonardo da Vinci. The full globe of the moon is visible, its darkened portion glowing bluish-gray interposed betweent the sunlit crescent and the not much darker sky.

5 comments:

rickismom said...

Yes, your photo's a bit better than mine. Frustrating for me, knowing that my older brother could have done MUCH better.....

G6 said...

Yes, and my Dad z"l would've shlepped out the tripod (probably scoped a better [rooftop] location, and gotten the best shot of all.

Mikeinmidwood said...

i missed that, thanks for posting the picture.

Leora said...

Thanks for teaching me about earthshine.

toby said...

Gorgeous!