Miguel Claro is a professional photographer, author and science communicator based in Lisbon, Portugal, who creates spectacular images of the night sky. As a European Southern Observatory Photo Ambassador and member of The World At Night and the official astrophotographer of the Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve, he specializes in astronomical "Skyscapes" that connect both Earth and night sky. Join Miguel here as he takes us through his photograph, "Morning Planets in the Skyline of Tel Aviv."
Planets align over the skyline of Tel Aviv in this panoramic view of the city by twilight.
Located on the Mediterranean coastline of Israel, Tel Aviv has the largest concentration of modern International Style architecture in the world. Part of the city of Tel Aviv, known as the "White City," was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003.
This panoramic view features a morning alignment above the skyline of Tel Aviv between the planets Saturn, Venus and Jupiter as seen during the morning twilight. Pluto also joined the alignment and was positioned only 6 degrees below Saturn, but the dwarf planet is not visible, due to its very dim appearance — especially through the evening twilight. Shining at around 14th magnitude, seeing Pluto requires a telescope with at least an 8-inch (200 millimeters) aperture. The human eye can distinguish stars and planets only up to about 6th magnitude.
Related: Bright Sights, Big City: Planets Align Over Manhattan (Photo)
At the right side of the tallest building in the foreground, the main stars from the Scorpius constellation are also visible, including the red supergiant star Antares — visible in the right-top corner — the brightest one in the image, after the main planets. Venus is the brightest object in the sky near the center of the image, and Saturn is located to its lower left. Above the tallest building on the right is the planet Jupiter.
To create this panorama, I combined two single frames captured with a Canon 6D DSLR camera, using a 24-mm lens set to f/3.5, with an ISO800 and an exposure time of 0.8 seconds.
Editor's note: If you have an amazing night sky photo you'd like to share with us and our news partners for a possible story or image gallery, please contact managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.
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To have a print of Claro's amazing astrophotography, visit his Fine Art Print store at www.miguelclaro.com/prints. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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