During late winter through early spring of 1999, the planets Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn were making various patterns in the evening sky. The first week of March, I was on the island of Maui, Hawaii which is about 12 degrees of latitude south from my home in Arizona. The planets were almost directly above the setting sun and making the shape of a hockey stick. I took this photograph on 3 March 1999 about 45 minutes after sunset when Mercury (the lowest planet) was about as high as it was going to get in the sky and almost the closest it was going to be to Jupiter. Venus is the brightest planet above Jupiter and then Saturn is the dimmest straight above Venus. The brightest stars of the constellation Aries (the ram) can be seen towards the upper right corner of the photograph.
I scanned the image with my new Nikon Coolscan LS-2000 and used Adobe Photoshop for color correction and very mild sharpening. Photograph by Rick Scott.
Updated: 20 March 1999