Starship Asterisk*

Well, to answer my own question, the day must have been 26 January 1995. At least the morning (EST) of that day fits for the Moon and two planets. The question remains how the photographer was able to position a sequence of Suns at the same levels as the successive images of the other bodies. At Fire Island Lighthouse, it took about 3 and a half hours for the Sun to reach the altitude which the Moon had reached at 7:15 EST. (And I suspect that for each Sun-Moon "pair" in the picture, the waiting time required for the Sun to reach the right level would be slightly different from the others.)

This beautiful picture was taken "ten years ago". Probably, therefore, it was taken either close to the Sun-Jupiter conjunction of November 1994 or that of December 1995. In the first case, when the Moon passed near Venus and Jupiter a month earlier, on October 9th, the Sun was about 30 ecliptic degrees west of them. The Sun was closer on the Moon's next passage in early November but the objects were still strung out over a 13-degree span, with the Sun between the two planets. In the 1995 case, Venus was 30 degrees east of the Sun-Jupiter conjunction.

Also, why is the Moon's white crescent not turned towards the (no doubt masked or heavily filtered) Sun? Or is that big yellow dot photoshopped in?

Or was the Moon photographed first, and the Sun as it rose later, so the yellow dot and Moon side-by-side don't correspond to the same time? (Even so, I don't think this would be possible on the dates I have mentioned - it [i]might[/i] have been possible in November 1993.)

What am I missing?