Photo of the Week for January 15, 2016
The morning sky has been a hotbed of planetary action over the past several months. It seems hardly a week goes by without some kind of conjunction taking place. This January 8 image by Gabriel Jones of Priddis, Alberta, shows the close pairing of Venus and Saturn on the right side of the frame (Venus being the brighter of the two), and the earthlit crescent Moon on the left. As he reports, “The wind chill was minus 30, but the sky was so beautiful it was worth it!”

Jones used a Canon PowerShot G16 point-and-shoot digital camera with its zoom lens set to the full-frame equivalent of 28mm for this 2.5-second exposure at ISO 125.