Venus, Taurus and the Pleiades - I
April 2012 is a great time for planet watchers. In the evening sky an hour after sunset, the planet Venus blazes in the constellation Taurus. Venus recently engaged in a rare conjunction with the Pleiades star cluster.
The image above shows the Venus in the constellation Taurus. To the left of brilliant Venus is the V-shaped Hyades star cluster in Taurus containing the smoldering orange giant star Aldebaran. Below and to the right of Venus is the small "dipper-shaped" Pleiades star cluster. A Nikon D90 and a Nikkor 50mm lens were used to capture the event (North is up).
Check Planetary Conjunctions for more photos of this lovely coupling.
For an almanac of other interesting sky happenings for each year, see Calendar of Astronomical Events.
Technical Details
- Conjunction: Venus, Taurus and the Pleiades - I
- Date/Time: 2012 Apr 10 at 03:12 UTC
- Location: Bifrost Astronomical Observatory, Portal, AZ
- Mount: Losmandy G-11 German Equatorial Mount
- Lens: Nikkor AI 50mm f/1.8
- Camera: Nikon D90
- Field of View: 25.1° x 16.9° at 17.4 arc-sec/pixel (web version: 98 arc-sec/pixel)
- Exposure: 120s, f/2.8, ISO 800
- File Name: BifrostVenus-0013w.jpg
- Processing (Adobe Camera Raw): Color Balance, Vignetting, Noise Reduction
- Processing (Photoshop CS5): Curves
- Original Image Size: 2848 x 4288 pixels (12.2 MP); 9.5" x 14.3" @ 300 dpi
- Rights: Copyright 2012 by Fred Espenak. All Rights Reserved. See: Image Licensing.