The Stars Align

That’s a classic line for a title, but a highly inaccurate one. While there are stars in view, the bright objects are not stars, but planets and our Moon.

When I first went out it reminded me of several symbolic scenes from “2001: A Space Odyssey.” (If there’s a giant 4x9x16 black alien obelisk floating out there to do something amazing and save the human race from our own incredible stupidity, NOW would be a good time! Just saying…)

The super bright object in the middle (and the upside down internal reflection from the iPhone camera above and to the left) is obviously the Moon. It’s a three-day old, 9% illuminated crescent that’s just stunningly gorgeous hanging there (see that upside down, reflected image) but still far brighter than anything else in the sky outside of the Sun.

The next brightest object, center top, is Venus, the third brightest object in the sky. It will be there for another couple of months in the evening sky. Tomorrow night the Moon and Venus will be even closer, if not lined up like a movie special effects shot. (Look for it yourself just after sunset!) We’ll see if we can see it here in LA, the weather’s supposed to be getting cloudy.

(Image: Star Walk app for iPhone)

I was curious if the bright object just above and to the left of the Moon was another internal reflection or not, but it’s apparently Saturn. I knew that it was out there, but in the twilight and slight haze (which also is making that halo around the Moon) I couldn’t see it with the naked eye. But no, that’s got to be Saturn that the camera’s picking up with a long exposure.

Not seen, but also there, is Neptune, just to the left of Venus. I might be able to pick it out as a pinpoint with my 8″ telescope (Venus and Saturn will show visible disks, Saturn’s rings would be clearly visible) and it might show some blue color, but the iPhone doesn’t have a chance.

Taking even longer exposures (this is 20 seconds, the longest my iPhone 13 will do) under the landing approach to Burbank Airport can lead to other visual visitors becoming prominent. That’s a private Cessna 550 Citation coming into Burbank at 3,725 feet and 127 knots.

And one other thing I notice in looking at these images on the big computer monitors instead of on the iPhone – take a look (full-sized images) at the Sky Walk image. Immediately to the left of the symbol for Neptune, there’s a quadralateral of four dimmer stars. You can see where Neptune is centered about midway between Venus and that quadralateral of stars. Now look at the full-sized image above, and there’s that quadralateral off to the left of Venus.

Can you see Neptune in there? Was I wrong above about the iPhone being able to pull it in? There are two very, very dim objects, one closer to the quadralateral and just above the wires, the other higher and closer to Venus. Could one of those be Neptune?

Zooming in as far as the Sky Walk app will take me, it might be the lower one, near the wire.

Intriguing…