Starlog September 1st, 2021, 7:56 p.m. local time
Took a walk last night, enjoying the gradually-cooling weather as mid-Summer shifts to late Summer. I generally walk West into the Sunset before turning back East to head home. On my way back, I noticed that Jupiter was clearly visible in the Southeast. Saturn could also be seen with some effort.
As I was about to turn off from the main side road, I checked the sky again and noticed Venus was within my vantage. So I did what any amateur astrophotographer would do…I got out my iPhone, set it to “Pano” mode, and took the accompanying long picture. Jupiter rose from the SE while Venus set in the SW.
I tried to pinpoint Saturn. I know approximately where it was, but I could not differentiate it from the camera artifacts, so I make no attempt here to mark Saturn. But it is definitely “in” the shot. And for that matter, Pluto is in this sky as well.
In case you are having difficulty finding the bright planets, this may help:
On a side but related note, I really hate the new WordPress editor (editor’s note: my prior blog, where this post was originally published, was hosted on WordPress). It is far too “GUI” and makes what were once easy functions far more difficult. I know you can install a plugin to get the classic editor, but it’s just not worth the effort. A great example is linking and captioning images. This was so easy in the classic editor but now requires a silly number of steps and never quite turns out right. Trying to leverage the buttons/popups is frustrating. And you can’t edit the HTML source like was possible before.
