Conjunction Near Dawn

Beautiful Morning Scene

Sometimes I get lucky! There were no clouds near the northeastern horizon before sunrise on September 19th, and no trees blocked the view. A conjunction of the crescent Moon, Venus, and the star Regulus was clearly visible from my back patio. Just before twilight began the next pictures show the scene. (Click on images to view at full size.)

 

At this time Venus was just 42 arc minutes from the Moon and 34 arc minutes from Regulus. (Regulus is the brightest star in the constellation Leo.) These three were nearly along the same line of sight from Earth but, of course, the Moon is closer than Venus and Venus is closer than Regulus. The Moon was 1.29 light seconds away, Venus was 12.08 light minutes away, and Regulus was 79.3 light years away. Although Regulus is intrinsically much, much brighter than either the Moon or Venus, the star is so far away its closer companions outshine it.

As twilight deepened foreground trees added to the scene. 

I struggled with dew formation on my camera lens because I waited too long to install a dew heater. Nevertheless, I did manage to salvage a couple good pictures of this magnificent event.