This photo of the Moon, Venus, and Jupiter was taken from my back yard here in Arizona. With the long shutter speed this shot is really overexposed but I liked that you can see all of the moon with the cool effects from Venus and Jupiter. Viewing the large photo you can see the effects better. I know very little about the planets but found this information.

The much brighter object is the planet Venus and the other less bright object is Jupiter. Looking through binoculars, or small telescope you will notice Venus is a crescent shape. This is because it is between earth and the sun, it will always appear as a crescent. Jupiter will appear as a disk and you can often see 3 or 4 of its Galilean satellites or moons.

The crescent moon is also part of the show. Along with the sun reflective crescent from the sun, you can or should see the rest of the moon. What you are seeing is actually earth shine, or the sun reflecting from our planet back to the moon.