Venus is the brightest object, to the lower right of the others and between power lines. To the upper left of Venus are Mars, and then Jupiter. Just below and to the left of Venus, and still between the same pair of power wires, is the Beehive Cluster, M44 in the constellation Cancer. I don't know what that smudge of light is to the upper left of Jupiter; I doubt it is a lens reflection of Venus, and it's too bright to be a galaxy. It shows up in another frame in exactly the same way. Photo was taken on Kodak ISO 400 slide film with a Fujica 35mm camera with a 55mm lens at f/1.8 for an unrecorded time, but note the airplane or satellite in the lower part. The camera was on an equatorial mount, with the long axis of the frame aligned north-south on the celestial sphere. After digitizing on an HP Photosmart scanner (original model), the picture was rotated and cropped.
Back to David Smith's home page