Picture of Venus and Jupiter

Last week I heard a story about how close the planets of Venus and Jupiter would appear in the Western skies all this week. Sure enough, we had excellent visibility last night and the two planets are immediately obvious as you look to the West. Beautiful. I got my tripod out and took the picture below, which required a 30sec exposure. I was pretty happy with how they could be framed between the gap in our tree line. Then I looked online to see the photographic efforts of others this week. Wow, the picture here on the National Geographic website is stunning.