By Tom Tan | 2025-04-17
Four planets at sunrise: Venus, Saturn, Mercury & Neptune
On 04/17/2025 05:38 am by Tom Tan | Melbourne, Australia
Venus at upper left corner, Saturn at upper right, Mercury at lower right,
Neptune diagonally below Mercury to its left.
(With a 200mm I could get all four planets in the same frame.
Neptune will show if this shot is downloaded and zoomed in).
There is so much difference in brightness that Venus was smeared even when the Saturn and Mercury were little dots.
I used this 200mm lens to locate the planets and took this shot.
Then I switched to a telescope to get closer to just Mercury and Neptune
in a companion shot.
All happening within around ten minutes while the sky was brightening.
Nikon 80-200mm at 200mm f/2.8
Nikon D750 full frame camera
exposure bracketing
Levels to darken the background
Contrast & Highlights to boost the brightness
Curves