Moon and Venus dazzled this morning.

[Melkus]

It was one of those times I’m glad the weather forecasters were wrong. Rather than the cloudy, rainy dawn they had forecast, we had clear skies before sunrise this morning as I took this shot of the Moon and Venus.



The upper portion of the moon is illuminated by “earthshine” or reflected light from the earth. It’s also know as “Da Vinci glow” because it was first explained by Leonardo Da Vinci in the 1500s.

The lower portion of the moon is illuminated by sunlight during this waning crescent phase. This morning the moon was showing a slim 5% sunlit face. Brilliant Venus shines by reflected sunlight too, its white clouds acting as a great reflector of sunlight. The Spikes” around Venus are caused by the aperture blades in the telephoto lens I used. This is not as good for a photo as I was hoping for but sometimes something is better than nothing. C@C always welcome.

[Bobobird]

Wow that is a fantastic catch.

Tell us how you went about doing this. Settings etc.

While blue and all looks nice it is making the sky looks pretty smudgy. I don't know how to fix that but hopefully someone here will.

[dje]

Very interesting Paul. Thanks for sharing.

Dave

[Melkus]

Wow that is a fantastic catch.

Tell us how you went about doing this. Settings etc.

While blue and all looks nice it is making the sky looks pretty smudgy. I don't know how to fix that but hopefully someone here will.

Thanks Bobo. Yea I know the sky looks funny and dang it I got some tree branches on upper right side and I try in pp to fix things some but I was making things look worth so. Shot using my D-90 on a tripod with a Nikon 55-300 lens, f/16, ISO 800, 1/500 and bracket my shots.

[Bobobird]

Thanks Paul.

[BJ Denning]

Very jealous. I saw this while leaving for work and almost ran back to get my gear and a shot. Wish I would have. Excellant shot.