Keeping Close Celestial Company

Large view

Venus and Saturn made their closest apparent approach to each other (conjunction) on June 30, when we were under cloud cover. The two planets were then only 7/10 of a degree apart. Tonight, when they were 8/10 of a degree apart, we still had a bit of haze and at first I was able to see a fuzzy Venus but no Saturn. I planted myself on the driveway with my camera and tripod, set my manual controls to my widest available aperture (f/4) and longest exposure (4 seconds), set my timed shutter release, and let 'er rip around 9 PM EST.

Voila!

I've included some nearby foliage to give an idea of scale. To give an idea of celestial scale, the full Moon measures a half-degree across, or 3/10 of a degree less than the apparent distance between these two travelers. We could tuck it just inside the gap between them.

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