2023 Feb. 28 ~ Jupiter and Venus in the evening sky over Toronto
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Photographed from mid-town Toronto at 19.27 EST, with the temperature at +1 C.
The planets Venus and Jupiter are always the brightest natural objects in the sky after the Sun and Moon.
This month they passed close to each other as seen from Earth, forming a pretty duo in the evening sky. The last close conjunction of these two planets was in May 2022, and the next one will be in August 2025. One of my favourite views of this pair was in January 2019, when the two flanked the CN Tower in the pre-dawn Toronto sky:
www.flickr.com/photos/97587627@N06/39917795063/
On this evening the scudding clouds made it challenging to capture both planets in a reasonably clear patch of sky at the same time. In this view Venus (to the lower right) was lurking behind a cloud, which reduced its apparent brightness to about the same level as Jupiter, even though in a clear sky Jupiter would have been only one-fifth bright as Venus.
At their respective positions in their orbits around the Sun on Feb. 28, Venus was about 1.36 astronomical units (“AU”, the average distance between Earth and the Sun) from us, while Jupiter was 5.78 AU away. So of course these two planets were, and always are, very far apart. They appear close together because as seen from Earth they are in nearly the same line of sight. On this evening it took light about 11.4 minutes to get from Venus to Earth; the light travel time from Jupiter was about 48 minutes.
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Technical information:
Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II lens on Nikon D810A camera body, mounted on Manfotto 057CF tripod with a Kirk Enterprises ball head
* 200 mm focal length
* ISO 800, 2 sec. exposure at f/11
Processed in Photoshop CS6 (brightness, contrast, colour balance, colour desaturation, sharpening on trees)
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2023 Feb. 28 ~ Jupiter and Venus in the evening sky over Toronto
***************************************************************************
Photographed from mid-town Toronto at 19.27 EST, with the temperature at +1 C.
The planets Venus and Jupiter are always the brightest natural objects in the sky after the Sun and Moon.
This month they passed close to each other as seen from Earth, forming a pretty duo in the evening sky. The last close conjunction of these two planets was in May 2022, and the next one will be in August 2025. One of my favourite views of this pair was in January 2019, when the two flanked the CN Tower in the pre-dawn Toronto sky:
www.flickr.com/photos/97587627@N06/39917795063/
On this evening the scudding clouds made it challenging to capture both planets in a reasonably clear patch of sky at the same time. In this view Venus (to the lower right) was lurking behind a cloud, which reduced its apparent brightness to about the same level as Jupiter, even though in a clear sky Jupiter would have been only one-fifth bright as Venus.
At their respective positions in their orbits around the Sun on Feb. 28, Venus was about 1.36 astronomical units (“AU”, the average distance between Earth and the Sun) from us, while Jupiter was 5.78 AU away. So of course these two planets were, and always are, very far apart. They appear close together because as seen from Earth they are in nearly the same line of sight. On this evening it took light about 11.4 minutes to get from Venus to Earth; the light travel time from Jupiter was about 48 minutes.
______________________________________________
Technical information:
Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II lens on Nikon D810A camera body, mounted on Manfotto 057CF tripod with a Kirk Enterprises ball head
* 200 mm focal length
* ISO 800, 2 sec. exposure at f/11
Processed in Photoshop CS6 (brightness, contrast, colour balance, colour desaturation, sharpening on trees)
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