No Need to Get Up Early for This Sky Spectacle

Photo date: January 24, 2016. Photographer: Mark Mahin.

The news media keep telling me recently that if I get up 45 minutes before sunrise, I'll see a sky spectacle of multiple planets in the sky. But for an orb photographer with a good full-spectrum camera, there's no need to get up early to see a sky spectacle.  On a typical night I will get photos like those below.

The first shows an orange orb floating above a building.

 Below is a closeup. It's not the moon.

The second one shows a purple orb floating above a building.

There was no fog, mist, rain or precipitation on this night. The air quality listed on airnow.gov was "good."  The pollen count listed on www.pollen.com was very low, with a level of only 0.1.