Today's Image

Venus, Jupiter, Regulus from Zimbabwe

View larger. | Venus (brightest), Jupiter (next brightest) and Mercury low in the twilight on August 3, 2015.  Photo by Peter Lowenstein in Mutare, Zimbabwe.
View larger. | Venus (brightest), the star Regulus and Jupiter (below Regulus) low in the twilight on August 3, 2015. Photo by Peter Lowenstein in Mutare, Zimbabwe.

For the past two days – in Mutare, Zimbabwe – we have had crystal clear evening skies and a brief resurgence of brightly colored volcanic sunsets.

On August 3, just before darkness, Venus, Jupiter and the star Regulus all became clearly visible just above the horizon in a fading purplish twilight arch.

The attached wide-angle picture is a 4-second time exposure taken with a tripod mounted Panasonic Lumix DMC-TX60 compact camera in Night Scenery mode.

The gap in the hills below the planets is Christmas Pass through which the main Mutare-Harare road runs. The streaked out lights below center skyline are from cars driving down towards town.

This time there are hardly any lights visible in the left foreground due to yet another evening of winter power load shedding in Chikanga suburb (in contrast to the Blue Moon night shot – below – in which all the lights were on).

The purplish appearance of the sky in both the late evening planets and very early dawn moonset photographs is due to lingering traces of highly dispersed aerosols from the Calbuco eruption more than three months ago.

See more posts by Peter Lowenstein at EarthSky

From S. Hemisphere, Mercury visible below Venus, Jupiter and Regulus

View larger. | Setting Blue Moon on July 31, 2015.  Photo by Peter Lowenstein in Mutare, Zimbabwe.
View larger. | Setting Blue Moon on July 31, 2015. Photo by Peter Lowenstein in Mutare, Zimbabwe.
Posted 
August 4, 2015
 in 
Today's Image

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