common_nature | Venus and Aldebaran

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.