Jupiter and Venus are in the evening sky just now and on this evening (2023 February 22) they were joined by our Moon. Image captured at 18:00UT with Jupiter at upper left and Venus at lower right, simply using an iPhone.
Over the next week the planets will appear to move toward each other until being only 0.5 degrees (Moon’s apparent diameter) apart on March 2.
Captured this photo yesterday evening (Feb 23) with a hand held iPhone 12. Had to brave the dodgy hill opposite my house though, but a nice view visually.
Gary – No dodgy hills around here that I know of, but my local Church and the trees around it are rather brightly lit. Here’s one of Jupiter and Venus from 1835UT tonight (Feb 25).
Our local parish church (St. Andrew & St. Cuthman, Steyning) has recently been fitted with new LED floodlights. However, there is some compensation in that it provides an interesting foreground for planetary conjunction images!
2023 March 1, 18.40hrs.
I’ve just been reading in The Darkness Manifesto by Johan Eklof about how the craze for floodlighting churches in Sweden significantly affected bat populations. (In the space of ten years half of the church roosts were lost with two species now on the red list.) Apparently turning off the lights before midnight helped to some degree
Ideal conditions but the 1C air temp combined with wind made my hands pretty cold by the end. I think the moonlight greatly improved on what I would have achieved with flash units.