The Moon and Jupiter

Last night just after sunset I saw this spectacular pairing of the planet Jupiter in the upper left of this photo, and the 5-day old moon.  It was just beautiful to see them both in the night sky, and this photograph is only a weak translation of what I saw, because Jupiter was so brilliant in the sky.  Here it is a dot so faint that  you can barely see it.  The Moon and Jupiter were unusually close, only about 5 degrees apart.  So I used a 200mm lens to capture them both.  The Moon was so much brighter than Jupiter that it is hard to show them both at their best.  About 15 minutes after going back into the house, because it was bitter cold on this clear night, I thought I needed to do a closer photograph of just the moon so you could see details of its surface.  That way I could expose just for the moon which is brilliant white and way overexposed in this photograph.

So I got my long zoom lens, which goes from 200mm to 600mm and used it at its longest focal length.  And this is the result!  The surface of the Moon is spectacular when I can get the exposure just right, and you can see all the incredible detail.  Endlessly fascinating, and these beautiful things in a clear night sky.  Please be sure and click on each of these to see them in more detail.