Planetary conjuntion

The nice thing about looking up at the planets in our sky is that they are bright!  Even here in suburban Los Angeles, the planetary conjunction that is gracing our evening skies is easily visible.  I am staying just off Ventura Boulevard (which sounds much nicer when put to music) and last night my niece Sophie and I went out to try and find a spot where we could spot the planets between the buildings and trees.  We managed to find the bright planets pretty easily and the palm trees in the image below were the best we could do for interesting foreground objects.

The brightest planet closest to the horizon is Venus, with Jupiter at its upper left and Mercury at its upper right.  Over the next couple nights Venus and Jupiter will appear closer together.  We also observed Saturn in the eastern sky and Sophie pointed out that we had just seen 5 of the 8 planets in our solar system (don't forget Earth!).

The picture was taken using a 24-105mm zoom lens (at 105mm) for 1/6 of a second handheld at f/5 with an ISO of 100.  I used Photoshop for some contrast and to sharpen slightly.  Tonight I will be at the Dodgers-Angels game and if it works out perhaps I will get a nice shot of this alignment from Dodger Stadium...