Venus and Antares

75mm, 2.5 sec, f/11, ISO 200

I took this photo of Venus alongside the red giant Antares last night while I was waiting for clouds over the penumbral lunar eclipse to pass. I didn't realize that my focal ratio was still stopped down, but I noticed afterward that it created a cool radial diffraction pattern around the street light and even Venus itself.

I'll have to keep this in mind and try some "starburst" star photos with cool lens flares around them.

Hopefully this photo uploads uncompressed. I got in a fight with Google+ last night when I realized they were compressing, resizing, and "image enhancing" all my photos. I don't spend time out in the cold playing with different exposure settings just for Google to "enhance" and re-color my images. This seems like something you should have to opt-in to, not something they turn on by default.