summer holiday signSwinford Camera Club will be taking a break from our meetings for the summer months. Club meetings will resume on Wednesday the 16th of September. Make sure though to keep the camera busy and keep taking plenty of photos!

There will be a great opportunity to get some night sky shots over the coming nights. The two brightest planets, Venus and Jupiter, are converging in the west for a spectacular side-by-side conjunction for the rest of the month of June.

 The next couple of nights will be of particular interest. On June 18th Venus and Jupiter will be only 6 degrees apart. On June 19th, the crescent Moon joins the show, together with Venus and Jupiter forming a bright isosceles triangle in the sunset sky. One night later, on June 20th, the vertices rearrange themselves, forming yet another isosceles triangle. The nights of June 19th and 20th are good nights to look through a telescope. 

Even a small telescope will show you the fat crescent phase of Venus, the cloudtops and largest moons of Jupiter, and the rugged terrain of Earth’s own Moon. The main event occurs on June 30th. On that night, Venus and Jupiter will be a jaw-dropping 1/3rd of a degree apart–less than the diameter of a full Moon.