[Cool!] Rare Planetary Alignment: Jupiter And Venus Align - March 13th 2012

Tonight when I was driving home, I couldn't help but notice what looked like 2 very bright stars together in the sky. They were so bright, they made the other stars appear insignificant. Naturally, I assumed it must be a planetary alignment. Sure enough, upon doing some quick searching, it was found to be a very rare planetary alignment of Venus and Jupiter.

Here are some pictures that I took tonight (March 13th 2012) around 9:15 PM. The larger and brighter of the 2 planets (on the right) as seen is Venus. The smaller and less bright planet (on the left) is Jupiter.




The first image is zoomed in, the second image is zoomed out.



In this image, I inverted the zoomed in image to enhance the planets. It kind of gives it a nice effect.





This is what happened when I zoomed in on Venus.



Here is another image of Venus, different level of zoom. You can see, it has a red hue.

There is also video that was taken, and will be posted shortly. For now, I thought I would share the photos taken tonight.

Enjoy!

Here are more pictures from tonight (March 14th).






These first 4 are just a progression of the movement in the alignment.



Venus and it's negative image, zoomed in.



Venus and it's negative image, zoomed a little further out than the picture above (with the purple and green).

Again, video is to come shortly. I will have video and pictures of each night that I am able to capture such.


Lady of Light

As promised. Here is the first in the series of videos of the Jupiter-Venus alignment. It's a quick little video just to show zoomed in and zoomed out what it looked like in the night sky on March 13th 2012.

And the video from March 14th, is a lot longer, but it has been sped up to 3X normal speed to show the movement of the planets. You can clearly see how both Venus and Jupiter are rapidly moving across the night sky. I had to keep adjusting the camera to keep up with them.

Enjoy!

[video=youtube;_wGmZlar3GI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=_wGmZlar3GI[/video]

Cool stuff, Lady! Thanks for posting! I assume you'll have more from tonight?

Thanks, SUNGAZER.

Unfortunately, I was unable to capture any pictures or video tonight. It was, and still is, very cloudy outside with electrical storms all around in the air. It's too bad too because tonight (March 15th) is supposed to be the peak of the alignment.

I will try for some more pictures/video tomorrow night. (Weather permitting of course.)

I wish I had the equipment to record the stars...but thanks to you guys I get to see them.

Here's more footage from March 16th 2012. I had a long line of footage, so most of the video is sped up merely to show the movement of the planets quicker. The original main footage is shot over 24 minutes, which is much too long for a video of this nature, so it was simply sped up and other portions of video from the night were added.

Enjoy!


[video=youtube;nLPdbFY-er0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=nLPdbFY-er0[/video]

Awesome stuff! I can't wait for the next celestial event!

Great stuff guys, what planet is which? I am assuming the bright one is Venus?

Here's a collection of the still images captured throughout the nights of the alignment.


[video=youtube;UC9SULvUr-g]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=UC9SULvUr-g[/video]

Alright everyone, aside from a few still shots that I would like to post from the last couple of nights, here is the final video in the series of the March 2012 Jupiter Venus alignment.

[video=youtube;--MDZ-y3nUY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=--MDZ-y3nUY[/video]


Check out 2 minutes and 45 seconds into the video at the top left corner. There's an interesting light that appears and then disappears. This was NOT an airplane passing by. You can see that it quickly appears out of nowhere, moves and disappears rather quickly. There are no obstructions in the sky at the time.

Ok, that's just cool!

Top one is Venus and bottom is Jupiter. Venus is much closer so with will always be brighter!

Nice pictures. Nice videos. I especially like the video with the UFO in it. That one's really cool. What are the chances of that? I guess if you point your camera to the sky for long enough, you're bound to catch something.

Ya, what you've got is great, but I'm still waiting on the other stills you said you'd post.