Here
are some photos of Venus and the crescent moon, on the morning of
December 7, 2015, about an hour before sunrise. As you can see,
they were very close, the moon almost occulting (getting in front of)
Venus. That probably happened later that morning.
Since
the moon is about half a degree across, eyeing it up, it looks like
the separation can’t be more than a tenth of a degree or less.
As
usual, these iPad pictures have some spillover from the target pixels
to surrounding pixels, with the relatively long exposures. That
makes the crescent moon look much larger than it is, and also
exagerates the size of Venus.
Jupiter
has also been very prominent, about 30 degrees to the left and up
from Venus. Mars was about half way between Venus and Jupiter, and
the bright star Spica was also more or less in the same alignment.
Here’s
a screenshot from the computer program Stellarium, showing that
alignment. It’s a rendering by the program, not an actual photo
(iPad or otherwise).
The
next picture is taken a bit later in the moringing, closer to
sunrise. Mostly, the clouds just give a moodier photo. The moon is
not quite as filled in, and Venus is a bit smaller.
The
next picture is a little later, after sunrise. The iPad exposure is
shorter, so fewer pixels get activated, and the crescent moon is much
closer to its naked eye appearance. Similarly, Venus is much more
accurately rendered.
Here
they are the next morning. You can just make out the crescent moon,
in the bottom left of the photo. I changed the contrast in that part of the picture, in an effort to make it a bit easier to see - that's why the bottom left looks funny. Venus is still quite bright, in the
top right hand corner.
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And, if you like the moon and Venus, you might like to read The Witches' Stones Book 3 - Love and Intrigue under the Seven Moons of Kordea. Action romance, and some speculative astrophysics about a moon at a planet's L2 point.
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