Beautiful Timelapse of a Triple Planetary Conjunction

By Nancy Atkinson - May 30, 2013 at 9:45 PM UTC | Planetary Science

We've shared

oodles

of great

images

from the recent planetary conjunction of Jupiter, Mercury and Venus, visible in the evening skies last week. But this video from astrophotographer

César Cantú

is just plain beautiful. On the evening of May 25, the conjunction of the three planets formed a triangle that moved through the sky, as seen from Big Bear Park in California, USA. César said via

Twitter

that the "star" effect was create by processing the video or with 4,6 or 8 point star filters.

And we've got one more conjunction image to share -- actually six.

Joe Shuster from Salem, Missouri had six great evenings of photographing the planetary conjunction, and put them together into one collage. He used a Canon T1i and Nikkon 105mm lens. Lucky guy!

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com