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Venus and Jupiter have been putting on quite a show for skywatchers in recent weeks.
The two planets have been shining brightly in the early evening sky for several weeks, and in recent days they have been moving closer together in the night sky. On Wednesday (March 1), the couple did theirs closest approach to each other while they also form an arrangement known as a conjunction, meaning they shared the same right ascension, the celestial equivalent of longitude.
As Jupiter and Venus began to approach each other over the past few weeks, astrophotographers around the world began capturing the celestial dance the two planets have been engaged in. A stunning image submitted by Soumyadeep Mukherjee from Dhanbad, India shows what the photographer calls “ 10 Days of Nearness” between the two planets, from February 21 to March 2, 2023.
Related: Don’t miss Venus and Jupiter shining close in the night sky. They won’t get closer until 2032!
Mukherjee shot the images that make up this 10-photo collage with a Nikon D5600 camera equipped with a Sigma 50mm F1.4 Art lens. Post-processing was done in Adobe Photoshop.
In an email to Space.com, Mukherjee described his process for taking the images that make up the collage:
“For the past couple of weeks, Venus and Jupiter have been stealing the attention of astrophotographers! They were getting close to each other, slowly but surely. I was lucky enough to capture their relative motion over the past 10 days. Another interesting find for me was the ever-changing hues of the sky after sunset!They add a lot to the final image.
Aperture was kept at f/2.8 and ISO was kept at 200 for all images. The shutter speed varied from 1/3 second to 1 second, depending on the lighting conditions. All the pictures were taken at the same time, between 18:10 and 18:20 India Standard Time.”
Mukherjee has been an amateur astrophotographer since 2020 and is part of a group known as Astronomads Bangla that is “working to popularize astrophotography in India,” the photographer told Space.com.
Be sure to check out more of Soumyadeep Mukherjee’s work on Instagram (opens in a new tab).
If you’re hoping to catch a glimpse of the next close encounter between Venus and Jupiter or other celestial events, our guides to the best telescopes and best binoculars are a great place to start.
And if you want to take your own gorgeous pictures of the night sky, check out our guide to photographing the moon, as well as our best cameras for astrophotography and best lenses for astrophotography.
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