Venus and the Stars of Winter 3/1/2020

  Last night after a windy and overcast winter I took advantage of first clear moonless night of spring to get some parting shots of the winter stars as they sink lower in the west each evening.  In the photo above Sirius the Dog Star, is the bright one on the left, the constellation Orion is toward the middle to the upper left of the peak of my house and the orangish star to the upper right of the peak is Aldebaran the eye of Taurus the Bull. In a couple of weeks they will be lost in evening twilight not to been seen in a dark sky again until August or September when they'll rise before the morning dawn.

  You may have noticed the jet sneaking into the frame as a streak of light emerging from behind the house peak.  Jets weren't the only things interfering with my astrophotography attempts.  The photo below shows another jet and two satellites.

Jet on left, stable satellite in the middle and a tumbling satellite on the right

   The changing brightness from not visible to bright as Venus is indication the satellite that left the dashed line is tumbling out of control with a period of about 5 seconds. 

  In the photo above, the light paths were cropped  (and in the case of the tumbler, rotated for composition purposes) to show the differences in the light trails they leave.

    Venus was bright enough to cast a shadow and did a admirable job lighting up the lake during the 30 second photo below.