~ Venus joins the Pleiades Star Cluster ~
 
Venus is now getting closer to the pretty open star cluster the Pleiades; just above the Pleiades (M45) is the other very open star cluster in the constellation of Taurus (The Bull) called the Hyades cluster.

​The bright orange red star is called Aldebaran and is known as the eye of the bull, it’s unrelated to the Hyades star cluster and much closer to us than the other stars in the group, it’s over 150 times brighter than our Sun!
 
The sky is very light here in Australia at 6.30pm and I’m only just able to take these pictures with Venus now in the twilight zone…

My images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens, first & second image taken with lens set at 22mm, 5-second exposure and ISO400. Third image taken with lens set at 70mm and cropped, 4-second exposure and ISO400.

We are going to have an exciting week in the western sky with the bright planet Venus meeting up with the pretty Pleiades Star Cluster that’s currently positioned in the constellation of Taurus (The Bull).
This event is quite rare is only happens every 8 years!
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~ I'll post all the exciting images and sightings here on my Astro blog ~

To understand more about this celestial event the Lowell Observatory has made a YouTube video
Venus Meets the Pleiades 2020

The four-day-old crescent Moon looked absolutely stunning with Venus in this wide view image of the western sky yesterday afternoon. The sky was still quite light when I took the photo and as the sky got a little darker Venus just looked more brilliant on the ecliptic not far away from the Moon.
 
I also zoomed in a took an image with the same lens at 400mm to get a closer view of the Moon, I usually only do this with a telescope but at the moment I can only take these images outside on my front lawn, so you just use what you have….
 
I hope everyone keeps safe and well while we go through this trying time in our world, keep looking up at the sky while in social isolation and try and stay happy…
 
My image was taken with a Canon 70D camera with a Canon 100-400mm lens set at 100mm, the ISO was 400 and exposure time was 2 seconds at F5.6. The close-up image was also taken with the same lens at 400mm; I stacked nine images in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4. The mosquitoes were very bitie, Ouch!

Venus is now looking very bright in the western sky but it also positioned lower so its making it quite difficult to take these high magnitude images through atmospheric disturbances.
 
I took the image with a Meade 10 inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope
ZWO 120 MC-S camera with 3x Barlow lens attached.
I've added a bit of magic with Photoshop to the second image to show a Sun flare :-) 
 
As Venus starts to get larger in size it also shows a smaller phase this is because we are seeing the planet come toward us in its orbit around the Sun. When it’s at a crescent phase it will be at its brightest because its getting closer the Sun it will also look its largest to us here on Earth through our telescopes because it will be close to us in its orbit.
 
To learn more about the amazing planet Venus please go to the NASA link below:
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/venus/overview/
 
NASA Science for kids Space Place - All About Venus
https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/all-about-venus/en/
 
Galileo's Observations of the Moon, Jupiter, Venus and the Sun
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/307/galileos-observations-of-the-moon-jupiter-venus-and-the-sun/
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Galileo's Phases of Venus and Other Planets
Source: Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale
 
Galileo Galilei's observations that Venus appeared in phases -- similar to those of Earth's Moon -- in our sky was evidence that Venus orbited the sun and contributed to the downfall of the centuries-old belief that the sun and planets revolved around Earth. Also sketched here are Jupiter, Saturn and Mars.
 

This is the first time I’ve had a clear night to view the star Betelgeuse in the constellation of Orion and it is the evening of the 29th February 2020 (Leap Day).  After taking images of the Moon and Venus (which I posted on my blog earlier today) I waited until Orion was getting low in the western sky to take some images to see how bright the star Betelgeuse was and in this very dark sky it was radiating brightly. Whatever has been happening with Betelgeuse seems to be sorting itself out…
I only have very basic equipment with me as we are camping and I didn’t expect
to be taking any images because of the many people with fires and lights in the camp ground, but we have found a lovely little corner where it’s very dark and I could not be happier out here with all the mosquitoes taking images of the night sky :-)
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The image was taken at Flanagan’s Reserve near Rathdowney in QLD with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens set at 24mm, the exposure time was just 10 seconds and ISO 2000, 10 images were stacked in DSS (Deep Sky Stacker) and processed in PS CS4.