Venus Crashes the Seven Sisters' Party

The -4.42 magnitude planet Venus was very closely situated to the Pleiades (M45, Seven Sisters) star cluster in the western sky on Saturday evening, April 4, 2020. By saying Venus was "crashing the Sisters party," well, no. Venus is actually located only about 57 million miles from earth, while the average distance of the five brightest stars of the cluster are some 380 light years away. The above image, captured at 8:27 pm CDT from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is a 2 second exposure at f/4.8, ISO ISO 800, 200mm focal length. This was a fortunate capture as encroaching high level clouds, faintly seen at bottom and right in the image, soon enveloped the group for the rest of the time they were visible above the horizon.

A closer cropped capture from 8:26 pm. This is a 1.6 second exposure. Nikon D7200 DSLR camera.