EarthSky Community Photos

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Peter Lowenstein
Mutare, Zimbabwe
12/17/2019
06:57 pm

Equipment Details:

Hand-held Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ60 camera in night scenery mode

Post-processing Details:

Photoshop Elements 15 - slight adjustment of size and orientation of three still images to produce mosaic sequence with steady background. Brightness and contrast of the two planets (in particular Saturn) enhanced to make them more clearly visible.

Image Details:

Earth Station Transit at Dusk
On Tuesday evening while observing Venus and Saturn setting at dusk a bright spot of light appeared above and to the right (north west) of Venus and for the next minute transited from right to left in the sky quite high above the two planets before fading from view. The changing brightness and elongated shape of the object suggests that it was the Earth Station satellite which had passed overhead while reflecting variable amounts of light from the Sun as shown in the accompanying mosaic. I was fortunate in being able to capture the unexpected transit as my camera was not on a tripod and the moving object was photographed freehand. This resulted in a series of photographs taken at slightly different angles which had to be slightly adjusted in size and orientation to keep the background steady.