Asteroid 2012 DA14

Asteroid 2012 DA14 just set the record for the closest known approach to Earth of an object of its size. It also passed by Bonn and I had a chance of seeing it after the clouds cleared.

However, some clouds still went by, as you can see in the video below.

As usually, the frames were taken with the Argelander Institute for Astronomy 0.5m rooftop telescope, from the center of one of the most densely populated regions in Europe (with the unfortunate side effect that the light pollution is absolutely terrible).

The anti-twilight arch

What can a belt of Venus do to an already beautiful planet?

This phenomenon forms where Earth's shadow is projected through our atmosphere and as explained by it's Optics Picture of the Day page it's a combination of the back-scattered red light and deep blue anti-sunward sky.

The moon was riding just on top of it as you can (barely) see in the large version of the image and just a few hours later I was the fortunate witness of the 2008 Perseid meteor shower :)