The impending snow storm has been delayed :-\  That was my realization when I got up this morning. Apparently, by quite a bit. Skies were crystal clear. As I looked out my front window, I noticed that the Moon and the planet Venus were sitting awfully close together (7* I read on Spaceweather.com). Sitting just above the duo was a bright star. Not fully caffeinated yet, I had to fire up Starry Night Pro to see that this was the bright star Spica in the constellation Virgo. Sweet. Groupings like this are called conjunctions and have held major significance throughout recorded history. That being the case, I figured I might as well put the camera on the tripod and see what I could come up with.

I ended up snagging a pair of images. The first shot shows the trio through the Canon Digital Rebel using a 75-30mm zoom lens. This nicely framed the scene. It also revealed a bit of detail on the lunar surface.

The second shot was with the 28-80mm lens pulled all the way back. This allowed me to get the mountains in the foreground. I exposed this shot for a full 10 seconds so that I got a nicely silhouetted mountain.

Astro Photo Details:

* Designation: The Moon
* Magnitude: roughly mag -12
* Size: roughly 1/2*

Astro Photo Processing Details

* Canon Digital Rebel XTi
* First 1/2s at ISO1600
* Second 10s at ISO1600
* Gimp Curves