Night Sky Photography -- 07-11/13-2021 -- Venus & Mars Conjunction with Young Crescent Moon

Good evening fellow stargazers!

Tonight I have some beautiful shots taken earlier this week of the Very Young Crescent Moon and the conjunction of Venus and Mars.

The first set of photos I took on Sunday, July 11th just outside of town using a local gas station in the foreground to give the shot of the three heavenly bodies in the west at dusk chasing the sunset some scale. Some clouds were moving in, but I was able to capture Luna's thin crescent and tiny Mars with no problems. As you can see in one shot I was able to capture the moon through the clouds quite nicely. Venus, of course was not hard to spot at all being the 3rd-brightest celestial body after the sun and moon respectively.

The second set of photos I took two days later on Tuesday, July 13th. I was unable to capture any evening photos on the previous day due to cloud cover and one of those frequent summer showers we're infamous for here in the Carolinas. Fortunately, the conjunction itself took place on the evening of the 13th and I was able to take a couple of beautiful shots -- one background shot and one close-up shot.

Although they appear close, Venus and Mars orbit the sun on either side of Earth and are roughly about 90 million miles apart from each other at their closest orbits. Mars is actually moving away from Earth in its orbit at the moment and getting smaller in the night sky, while Venus is getting closer to the Earth. Venus orbits the sun once every 225 Earth days (Venus rotates very slowly on its axis -- one day on Venus lasts about 243 Earth days, which actually makes a Venusian day longer than its year!) while Mars takes 687 Earth days (670 Martian Days, or Sols) to travel around the Sun.

As it stands right now, from out vantage point here on Earth, Venus outshines Mars by about 200 times. At the time of conjunction, Venus appears about 0.5 degrees north of Mars in the evening sky, that's roughly about same diameter of the Moon.

Both of our nearest planetary neighbors are heading for the Constellation Leo’s brightest star, Regulus, later this month. Venus will have a conjunction with Regulus on Wednesday, July 21st, passing about 1.2 degrees north of this star. Mars will rendezvous with Regulus on Thursday, July 29, sweeping 0.7 degrees north of the star.

Hopefully clear skies will afford me the chance to capture those images for y'all later this month.