<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">The skies at Horton Bluff (Avonport) were reasonably co-operative during the recent presentation of planets in the early morning sky. I managed a few photos on the mornings of Oct 11, 12, 14 and 15. The best balance for natural lighting and contrast was obtained between 6:15 and 6:45 a.m. with typical exposures between 5 and 10 sec, ISO 200, f 5.6 to f 8.0, using a SONY point-and-shoot in manual mode on tripod. <div><br></div><div>Both Mercury and Venus are advancing more in line with the Sun (their orbits are taking them around to pass behind the Sun, relative to us). The effect is that each morning, they rise later and are deeper into the brightening dawn. For example on the 11th Mercury rose just about at 6 a.m., by Oct 15th it was lazy; it did not get up until about 6:16 a.m.! So, we just had to wait until it was high enough to be seen, without the dawn being too bright. By the 15th it was more difficult to pick Mercury out without the binoculars, the sky was quite bright before Mercury was high enough to be seen well. </div><div><br></div><div>You can also see that during this period Venus and Saturn traded places relative to the horizon. Unfortunately, the morning they were side by side, the sky was totally overcast.</div><div><br></div><div>Two of the mornings, I had to wait out passing, low cloud, before the right moment for a photo, presented itself. Here is a sample of whai I saw and captured digitally, on each of the mornings mentioned. You can view as a slideshow. Hope it works. <a href="http://picasaweb.google.ca/shermwill/MorningPlanetsOct2009">http://picasaweb.google.ca/shermwill/MorningPlanetsOct2009</a></div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://picasaweb.google.ca/shermwill/MorningPlanetsOct2009"></a>The thin crescent Moon joined the grouping, <a href="http://spaceweather.com/submissions/large_image_popup.php?image_name=Antonio-Finazzi-01-Cong1258_1255674236.jpg">near Venus on the morning of the 16th</a>, but that too was an overcast morning for me. Some folks who post on Spaceweather caught it. <a href="http://www.spaceweather.com/">http://www.spaceweather.com/</a></div><div><br></div><div><div>On all the mornings, Mars was also putting on a little show of its own, involving the crescent Moon and the Gemini Twins (Pollux and Castor). I may include a photo of one of the arrangements in the slideshow at a later date. </div></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Sherman</div></body></html>