Dawn's Early Light...

It takes a lot for us to get up before sunrise...  We're natural night owls, usually heading to bed around Midnight, sometimes later.  As a result, we usually rise about 8, long after the sun clears the horizon.  But with Melinda's regimen of radiation twice a day, we need to be at the hospital by 8am, requiring getting up at the (for us) ungodly hour of 6:30 to allow time to feed the livestock (cats), litter box chores and showers.  Fortunately we're only a few minutes from the hospital, but still...

This morning, after a warning of a Moon-Venus alignment from  Andrew Cooper's blog last night, when we cleared the bed, I grabbed the camera and stepped outside to document the morning crescents.  They weren't as close as I was hoping, but the moon next to Venus was quite pretty.  I took the wide shot at left encompassing both, then moved the zoom lens to the maximum of 200mm and cropped tightly for the shot at right.  The star just below the moon is 21 Sagittarii, a moderately bright star above the Teapot asterism, standing out here only because it is so near the moon.  Just to prove it could be done, I also shot Venus at 200mm - the tiny crescent of it still detected, indicating the planet's phase could still be seen in binoculars...

Tomorrow morning the moon will be on the other side of Venus - we'll be up again, so maybe you'll see it yet again here!