Matched Pairs

There were some close couples in the dark skies of Wednesday, November 28, 2012. If you got up early enough on this day you could see two at the same time. The top image shows the planets Venus (lower) and Saturn around 5:28 AM looking east from Archer Drive in the new Bowman Meadows housing development just off Boyson Road in Marion, Iowa. The lights directly below the planets comes from a power station on Alburnett Road. At distant right along the tree line is the illuminated steeple of First United Methodist Church in downtown Marion. Venus and Saturn were in conjunction, within two degrees of one another. In the west sky at this moment, another cozy pair, the full moon and the planet Jupiter were within one degree of each other. The bottom image, shot from my driveway on Brentwood Drive in Cedar Rapids, shows the two later this day around 8:53 PM as they were rising in the east. Jupiter is above the moon, and the star Aldebaran can bee seen right of it. All bright objects in this image are veiled in a ghostly shroud of cirrus clouds.