Night Sky Photography -- 10-09-2021 -- The Moon & Saturn With Antares In The Southwestern Sky

Good evening my fellow stargazers!

This evening I captured several really outstanding shots of the crescent moon and Venus, with the bright red star, Antares, and most of the major stars of the Constellation Scorpius the Scorpion in the southwestern sky above my neighbor's houses about 45 minutes after sunset.

As you can see in the first photo, the wide shot, the three heavenly bodies are clearly visible, with Venus in close conjunction with Luna in her beautiful crescent glory. In the second photo I took a close-up of the crescent moon, which will soon be a First Quarter Moon on the evening of Tuesday, October 12th this week.

My third photo is a close-up of Luna and Venus with the red giant star, Antares -- the Heart of the Scorpion -- making up the third part of the heavenly triangle. 

As I've mentioned in previous blog posts, Antares is a red supergiant star approximately 604 light-years from our Sun and actually part of a binary system with the largest, Antares A (a Scorpii) visible to us as the 15th brightest star visible from Earth in the sky dome. The bright orange-red coloring of Antares is clearly visible on camera.

In my final photo, I outlined the first part of the Constellation Scorpius The Scorpion visible in the tree-line. You can actually just make out the final star of the arms of the scorpion visible through the trees at the bottom right of the shot.

Venus will continue to be visible with the stars of the Constellation Scorpius for at least the next two weeks as Venus continues to move steadily eastward away from the sunset. Antares and Venus will soon have their own conjunction in the evening sky on Saturday, October 16th -- one week from today. God and cloudless skies willing, I should have some photos of that event as well.

Until next time, have a good night and y'all be sure to keep your eyes to the night skies, y'all hear!