Moonlight Feels Right

Although strong moonlight did nothing to help potential Northern Lights observation on this

evening, it did provide an aesthetic illumination to the foreground seen here and did nothing to diminish the brilliant shine of the planets Jupiter (upper) and Venus in the western sky. Jupiter sparkled at -2.13 magnitude and Venus at -4.25. This image--shot from Echo Hill Presbyterian Church near Marion, Iowa around 9:17 PM, Thursday, March 8, 2012--is a five second exposure at f/5, 1600 ISO and 20mm focal length. Air temperature was around 36 degrees F. Jupiter and Venus were within just a few degrees of one another as seen from Earth and getting closer.