Moon Passing Jupiter

The moon passing Jupiter on the night of 18 Feb 2013 at 10:22pm.

I saw the half moon in the very clear sky tonight and decided to take a photo of it. Using a Nikon FT-1 adaptor, I mounted my Nikkor AF 80-200mm f/2.8D ED-IF to my Nikon 1 V1 to get as much magnification as possible. This combination gives an effective focal length of 540mm, which actually still isn’t as close as I’d like, so I had to crop the final picture.

After posting to Facebook, I realised that a friend, Genghui has also posted a similar shot and mentioned that the moon was passing Jupiter (the bright dot below the moon in the photo above.) I had originally thought it was Venus as that’s usually the brightest celestial object close to the moon.

According to Space.com, tonight is when the moon will be closest to Jupiter. I am glad to be able to see and photograph this.

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