A morning worth waiting for.

[maw lod qan]

Took the dogs out at 3:00 am to find the sky clear, Jupiter rising behind Scorpio. Off to the East, Saturn was making its appearance as well.

Took my babies back in, made my coffee and told myself I'd take an hour for the two planets to get a little higher.

Carrying out the camera and eyepieces, I decided to do a little wide field of Jupiter with Scorpio while I visually observed.

I could make out the bands of Jupiter well and the four large moons were clearly visible 3 to one side, 1 to the other.

When I went to get my camera, I saw that the Milky Way was faintly visible, so I took a few longer exposures trying to get it to stand out.

While taking the camera off the tripod, the bright dot of a meteor appeared beneath the big dipper, no streak or trail, just an incredibly fast dot till it disappeared. Not five minutes later while setting the camera up on the telescope, I see another meteor to the South. This one your typical long streak through the sky.

Before I knew it, I had spent two hours doing some imaging of Jupiter, Saturn and the crescent moon. With the glow of the sun showing I started to finish when I saw Venus rising over the horizon. In an act of desperation, I shot a few images of it through trees to be able to claim 3 planets in one morning.

None of my images would ever make APOD, but they do give me a lot of pleasure.