Two Crescents in the Sky
On Monday, September 14, 2026, a truly unusual celestial event took place: the Moon—just three days past the new moon phase—occulted the bright planet Venus in also “crescent” phase. Two almost same shaped crescents could be seen in the small telescope anglulary close to each other. In Central Europe, the event unfolded low above the southeastern horizon during daylight hours, which made observation significantly more challenging.
Although I traveled halfway across the Czech Republic hoping to catch the event through breaks in the clouds, the weather turned out worse than forecast, and I was unfortunately unlucky regarding the moments of closest angular approach between the bright planet and the Moon. Unlike the case of previous year, when the sky was perfectly clear, the view toward the Moon from Dřemčice in western Czech Republic only cleared up about 50 minutes after Venus had emerged from behind the Moon’s illuminated limb (around 11:30 UT). Nevertheless, I didn’t give up and managed to capture this dramatic shot, showing both crescents still positioned relatively close together behind the turbulent clouds.
For this image, I used Dobsonian 10-inch telescope, f5, Nikon Z6III, ISO 250, 1/6400s exposure. Moon was sharpened by stack of fast sequence of 64 single images taken quickly as continuous sequence.
