The new crescent Moon looked ever so pretty this evening with the planets Jupiter, Venus and Saturn all on display in the western sky after sunset.
I was again nearly eaten alive by the mosquitoes taking the photos…but it was worth it :-)
 
My image was taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens on a tripod; the exposure time was 3.2 seconds at F16 and ISO800.

I just managed to capture Venus and Jupiter at there closest approach (only 1.4 degrees apart) before a large dark cloud (that looked a bit like a Dragon) completely covered the planets, at least I got a picture of them :-)
 
Venus has now passed Jupiter on the ecliptic and will continue to get higher each night until the new crescent Moon joins them in a couple of days time, so the shows not over yet…
 
My image was taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens on a tripod; the exposure time was 0.4 seconds and ISO1250 and YES, the mosquitoes nearly ate me alive again!

There is a spectacular celestial display happening in the western sky after sunset for anybody who takes the time to go outside and have a look…
 
A meeting of two of the brightest planets in our solar system is taking place and they are getting closer and closer every day…so please hop off your comfortable lounge and pop outside to take a look at the wonderful display :-)
 
If you have a look at the close up photo of the planets you can just make a couple of the moons of Jupiter beside the planet, which was lovely to capture.
 
Image was taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400 mm lens on a tripod; the exposure time was 0.6 seconds and ISO1600. 

What a wonderful surprise I got today when I saw that my images of the planets Venus & Jupiter taken from a plane at 30,000 ft were showcased on the front page of Spaceweather.com 
https://www.spaceweather.com
https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=157631
 
This is such an awesome website that is penned daily by Dr Tony Phillips, where current up to date information is given on the Sun-Earth environment with daily information about the Sun.  At least once or twice a day I check what’s happening in our sky and just love looking at all the images posted.
 
The added beauty of the website, is that people from all over the world can share there images of what’s happening in the daytime and night-time sky…it’s an incredible way to bring us all together on planet Earth by observing the natural wonders of the universe that we live in…

Where I live on the Gold Coast in Qld Australia we never see the constellation of the Southern Cross upside down, because our latitude here is 28°south and that’s too high. So the Southern Cross always dips down into the horizon for quite a few hours until it’s seen again rising in the southeast later in the night or early morning.
 
While on a visit to the south island in New Zealand, I got such a wonderful surprise when I went out onto the patio and saw the Southern Cross upside down in the southern sky…I was so excited I ran inside and garbed my camera to take some images even though there was a full Moon and the sky was very light.
 
The beautiful town that we stayed in was called Kaikoura and its latitude is 42° South, this is why I could see the Southern Cross in its entirety upside down.
 
It would have been just amazing if the sky had been dark but I did my best with a full Moon in the sky and decided to take a picture of the snowy mountains in moonlight, this image below is completely lit up by the Moon and it’s just so beautiful. The moonlight lit up all the foliage naturally and the stars on show are in the northern sky and are part of the constellations of Pegasus and Andromeda.

So it just shows you no matter what light is in the sky you can always get some awesome images, you just have to always be looking up to be rewarded :-)

Visiting New Zealand
​
If you live in New Zealand and would like to know what’s in your sky tonight, then please go to the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand website and download a current star map at:
http://www.rasnz.org.nz/in-the-sky/sky-index
 
The images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and an 18-400mm Tamron lens on a tripod. The Southern Cross image was taken with lens set at 35mm; exposure time was 5 seconds and ISO 640. The snowy mountain image was an 8 second exposure, and lens set at 28mm, ISO 1000. The full Moon image was a 5 second exposure @f8 and lens set at 35mm, ISO 1000.

On the evening of the 16th November we boarded a plane for a flight from Christchurch in New Zealand to the Gold Coast in Australia.
 
What a wonderful surprise I got when I looked out my plane window and saw the beautiful colours of sunset in the evening sky with the brilliant planets Venus and Jupiter in the western sky with the constellation of Scorpius…it looked absolutely stunning!
 
When I wiggled around in my seat I also spied the constellation of the Southern Cross (Crux) with the pointers that was upside down in the south western sky, the colour gradient from a light blue sky to the inky black sky above the plane was quite breathtaking…
 
The images were taken with a Canon G7X Mark11 camera on manual focus and ISO 1600. To capture the images I had to put a jacket over my head to block out all the lights from the interior of the plane…I got many strange looks from the other passengers, but I just smiled and kept taking the pictures :-)

The bright stars Alpha and Beta Centauri, which are the pointers to the Cross, are also on display to the right.
What a glorious sight it was from my aeroplane window :-)

The beautiful Pleiades open star cluster (M45) is now at prime viewing in the evening sky in the constellation of Taurus. The nebulosity still surrounding these very hot blue young stars is just stunning!
 
The Pleiades star cluster is a group of hundreds of stars that were born from the same stellar nebula about 100 million years ago and is over 400 light years away from us.
 
The Pleiades get there name from Greek legend and are known as the ‘Seven Sisters’ stories of them are also found in many other cultures including the indigenous peoples here in Australia.
https://japingkaaboriginalart.com/articles/star-dreaming-seven-sisters/
 
Have a look up in the sky and see if you can spot seven or more stars in the cluster with just your eyes, make sure it's a clear dark night and I’m sure you will see them all :-)
 
To find out more about this amazing star cluster please go to a couple of these website below:
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades
https://www.naic.edu/~gibson/pleiades/​

​The images were taken at my stardust observatory at Leyburn in QLD Australia with a Meade 80mm ED Triplet refractor telescope and a Canon 70D camera. There were 25x3 minute subs and 15x3 minute darks captured which were stacked in DSS and processed in PS CS4.