On December 1, Venus, Jupiter, and the Moon made this pretty formation in the sky:
That shot was taken on my little department store digital camera. All I did was mount it on a good tripod and bracket the exposure (that is, take a bunch of shots with different exposure times). I knew my neighbor's tree would make an interesting sight in a longish (10 second) exposure, and tried to balance the foreground objects. The glowing clouds were a nice bonus. My point is, taking pretty shots of astronomical events is not terribly hard, and if you have even basic equipment you should take the opportunity to try. Search Flickr for "Venus Moon Jupiter" to see tons of results from folks who took photos of this remarkable event. Dave Mosher on Discovery's blog has more, as does Scott Hurst, and pretty much every other astronomy blog out there. It's nice to see so many folks giving this a shot. If you have a picture online, link to it in the comments and let others see how yours look!
