Starship Asterisk*

Crescent Moon and Planets Over Portugal

Explanation: Sometimes, it's fun to share the sky. Although it might appear that the two sky enthusiasts on the ridge are sharing only a crescent moon between them, three bright planets also stand before them. The brightest point in the sky is the planet Venus, while reddish Mars floats above it, and Saturn shines off to its right. In the foreground are picturesque clumps of sand of the beach at Costa da Caparica, before the reflecting waters of the Atlantic Ocean. The evening picked to planet gaze was a particularly good one as the Perseids meteor shower was also reaching its peak. Fortunately, this evening sky was not unique to Alamada, Portugal last Thursday, but visible to sky enthusiasts the world over last week. These planets will all remain visible at sunset this week, although Venus will sink to the horizon as it closes in on the setting Sun.

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Congratulations to Miguel Claro, it is a very beautiful photo.
Grettings
César

Clearly. But what happened to "Sand Planets", which was yesterday's tomorrow's photo?

I looked at this image plus a magnification and never did see the "reddish" image of Mars mentioned in the legend. There IS a red object further to the left in the field, however. Mike in Macon

Gorgeous image!

Beautiful evening, beautiful photo!!

I liked the video of Costa DE Caparica also; Nice peaceful and serene! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PS59Y3IR-SQ I also saved the photo as a wallpaper.

Beautiful image, compliments.

Outstanding photograph. This is one you not only see but feel in your gut.

i like the way the photographer caught the Moon between the two guys on the high ground.

Hi dear group, I would like to thank for the nice comments about my NASA´s APOD image, of today 18-08-10!

Best regards

Miguel Claro

http://miguelclaro.com

Just one precision. This looks more like the 10th of August.
Am I wrong?

Good picture indeed.

joão wrote:Just one precision. This looks more like the 10th of August.

According to EXIF data, pictures was taken 2010 Aug 12, 21:31, no time zone specified, so I assume that's local time.

bystander wrote:According to EXIF data, pictures was taken 2010 Aug 12, 21:31, no time zone specified, so I assume that's local time.

It is always wise to be skeptical about EXIF data. It is fairly common for people to have the wrong date (and even more commonly, the wrong time) set in their cameras. I'm not saying that's the case here, just pointing out how things often work. I've encountered many APOD images that clearly had incorrect dates or times in the EXIF header.

Yes Bystander and Chris, the image was taken 12th August in the night of the meteor shower. The time, was the local summer time, 21h31. I always try to keep the date and time correct on the camera.

Regards
Miguel Claro

http://miguelclaro.com

Chris Peterson wrote: It is fairly common for people to have the wrong date (and even more commonly, the wrong time) set in their cameras.

Yeah, but usually when people have the wrong date/time set in their cameras, it's way off!

I wonder why joão suggested that the date of this image was wrong?

I posted this lovely image on the Observation Deck on August 13. Miguel often sends me images to post very soon after capturing them; I don't doubt the August 12 date at all.

Sory, i just posted a possible date acording to the sky, since i didn't see one there and i guessed many would assume it was from the 18th.
Was mislead though by the distance from saturn to the moon. At first look it seemed further then it was.
In no way i was doubting anyone..

And, it is still a beautifull picture!

For just looking at the sky, you came very close; kudos!

owlice wrote:Yeah, but usually when people have the wrong date/time set in their cameras, it's way off!

Surprisingly not. Many people set their camera's clock when they get it, and don't think of doing it again. And these clocks are frequently not very accurate. So it is very easy for them to be off by many hours at least. Also, people tend to not change the clocks when they travel. This especially impacts many of the sorts of images seen on APOD, where the imager has gone someplace distant to catch an event. In those cases, the EXIF time can easily be off by many hours from local time, which is usually what we care about when analyzing an image.

Anyway, careful astronomical imagers do tend to keep the clocks correctly set, but I'd still approach the date and time in any EXIF header with skepticism in the absence of other information.