Venus and Aldebaran

[yourlibrarian]

What is the above? An embryo? A virus? A smudge on the camera lens? Nope!



As you can see from that bright dot up right over the top of the apartment building, that is actually Venus. I have never seen it so clearly in the sky as we saw last night. Although it looks like a dot above, in person it looked much bigger, like a long vertical bar of white with a bar of green across the middle. It wasn't until I pointed the camera at it that it resolved into a circle below.



The sky in general was remarkably clear and with many stars. Normally our area is not good for stargazing. Whether it's low cloud cover or just city light, there are many nights when I can only see two of them. But last night there were bunches. The second brightest my SO identified as Aldebaran and it came out as follows below.

Comments

[shirebound]

I was astounded at how bright Venus was last night! I need to dust off my telescope.

[yourlibrarian]

Right? I can often spot it in the sky but it was so big last night. I imagine a telescope view must be incredible right now.

[chestnut_pod]

Wow, amazing! It's incredible to be able to see the difference between the planet and its atmosphere from here thanks to your camera. A phone camera! How our collective knowledge has grown…

[yourlibrarian]

Ah, well I need to clarify that this was not with a phone. We have a 10 year old SLR camera with a zoom lens.

But even so -- we just took some photos of the ducks across the lake this past week and they're rather fuzzy. Yet that a picture of something millions of miles from us shows up at all? I'm amazed.

[caprices]

That is amazing! My partner and I noted it was extra bright on our evening walk, but I did not have photography equipment sufficient unto astronomy at hand.

[yourlibrarian]

Glad I got it for you then :)

[minoanmiss]

That's an AWESOME photograph!

[yourlibrarian]

Thanks!

[queenkatyastar]

Okay, I'm about to be without Internet again, so I'm just going to ask this here instead of trying to google it. Otherwise, I won't remember when I get to connect again. But what is the real Aldeberan??? The one I know is a cat planet from Bucky O'Hare. LOL

[yourlibrarian]

Haha, and see when my SO first mentioned it, I was thinking about Alderan from Star Wars.

From Wikipedia: "Aldebaran /ælˈdɛbərən/, designated α Tauri (Latinized to Alpha Tauri, abbreviated Alpha Tau, α Tau), is a red giant star about 65 light-years from the Sun in the zodiac constellation Taurus. It is the brightest star in Taurus and generally the fourteenth-brightest star in the night sky, though it varies slowly in brightness between magnitude 0.75 and 0.95.
...
The planetary exploration probe Pioneer 10 is heading in the general direction of the star and should make its closest approach in about two million years."

So I guess we'll all miss the updates when it arrives...