Venus and the Pleiades Conjunction

This spring has been great for conjunctions in the sky.  In February, Venus, Jupiter and the Moon were in conjunction in March.  There was another conjunction of Venus, Jupiter and the Moon.
The following is from the NASA Science News Website:
"This week the second planet from the sun will pass directly in front of the Pleiades star cluster. It's a rare sunset conjunction that's easy to find with the unaided eye, but best seen through binoculars or a small telescope.
The action begins on Monday evening, April 2nd, when Venus enters the outskirts of the little dipper-shaped asterism. Look west at sunset for Venus--it's the brightest thing around--then scan the area using binoculars. The conjunction will be immediately clear. The best evening to look is Tuesday, April 3rd, when the brilliant planet glides just south of the dipper's bowl. Venus exits by the handle on Wednesday, April 4th. Venus passes through the Pleiades in this way about once every 8 years.
To say this is a mixture of dissimilar things would be an understatement. This week the second planet from the sun will pass directly in front of the Pleiades star cluster. It's a rare sunset conjunction that's easy to find with the unaided eye, but best seen through binoculars or a small telescope.
The Pleiades are elusive. You rarely find them on purpose. They're best seen out of the corner of your eye, a pretty little surprise that pops out of the night sky when you're staring elsewhere.
Venus is just the opposite. Dazzling, bright enough to cast faint shadows, it beams down from the heavens and grabs you when you're not even looking.
The Pleiades, also known as the "Seven Sisters," are a cluster of young stars. They formed barely 100 million years ago during the age of dinosaurs on Earth from a collapsing cloud of interstellar gas. The biggest and brightest members are blue-white and about five times wider than our own sun.
Because of their distance, about 400 light years away, the Pleiades are near the limit of naked-eye visibility. When Venus joins them in conjunction, it will look like a supernova has gone off inside the cluster. Venus's thick clouds reflect so much sunlight, the planet outshines every thing in the night sky except the Moon. Strangely, though, the Pleiades do not look puny in comparison, just delicately beautiful. "
I took the above picture this evening, utilizing a 300 mm lens with a 1.4 converter and the only post processing that I performed was noise reduction.  The rays of Venus occurred in camera.
So if you have a chance, and the weather allows it, go outside tomorrow, April 3, 2012, around 9 PM and look in the Western sky for Venus brightly shining in the Pleiades.

Celestial Triple Conjunction

Occurring this weekend there was a spectacular event in the night sky.  There was a triple conjunction of Venus, Jupiter and the Moon, it was able to be observed, looking toward the western sky at twilight..  Although, the past few days I have not been up to par and have been home and not doing any photography, I had to get out to at least observe this event.
We arrived at the parking lot at Horseneck beach, prior to sunset and set up our cameras..  I was using a wide angle lens, a 17-35 mm, that was set on manual focusing and I had focused at an object fire in the distance to make sure everything was in focus.  I had set my lens to an f-stop of 4.5, the camera also was on manual, single shot, and I attached a remote release.  My ISO was 800, and my shutter speed varied depending on my histogram.
As the sky darkened, after sunset, the first object that appeared was a crescent moon, followed by Venus, which was below the moon, and then Jupiter appeared to the left of the moon.  Of course, as the skies darkened the celestial bodies got brighter and slowly did the stars appear.  Also, low on the western horizon, Mercury was visible.  In the photographs, the hardest part about locating Mercury was the lightness of the horizon due to the lights coming from the city of Fall River.

Labeled

Planets and Moon over Bath House

Other sky events that are coming up in March:  Mars, (in the East) which will be the brightest around March 4; Venus and Jupiter will be the closest in mid-March.  On March 12 and 13th Venus and Jupiter will only like 3° apart and will look like headlights in the sky.  An interesting side to this conjunction of Venus and Jupiter was this was the event that occurred in 2 B..C.,  known as the Star of Bethlehem.

Big Dipper and Polaris

. Prior to leaving, I took this picture of the Big Dipper and Polaris (the North Star).  The light area on the bottom are lights from New Bedford, Massachusetts