Venus-Jupiter conjunction

Tonight marks the closest encounter in this summer's epic Venus-Jupiter Great Conjunction, and the two planets—Venus is the brighter of the pair—have drawn very close together, separated by about a pinky finger on an outstretched hand. Or, alas, they would have been, had the weather been more cooperative this evening. As often happens during celestial events, the sky was too cloudy to see the planets, so, truth be told, this was the view from the ridge last night at about 9:30. Tonight, they're even closer, but, unless I was in a jet or on the International Space Station, I wasn't going to be able to see the show, so this is the best I'm going to be able to offer this time around. Venus and Jupiter will appear to be close for the next week—they're actually, of course, separated by many millions of miles—so there'll be other opportunities to catch the show, and if you miss it, there's another deceitful encounter on October 26, but that one occurs in the pre-dawn hours, so it'll be harder on the body to observe and photograph. (The track to the left of the planetary pair, by the way, is a plane caught on pixels during this 10 second time exposure.)