four or five planet evening

Clear skies, cold still weather: good seeing.  So, about half past six this evening, we looked for the planetary alignment.  We saw (with the naked eye) faint Mercury close to the still faintly pink horizon, spectacular Venus dominating the western sky, bright Jupiter near the zenith, and red red Mars a little further round.  Binoculars made them brighter, but still point like, except for Venus.  I could convince myself I could see Venus’ phase, but it was so bright, it was hard to be sure.

Later, 8:30-9pm, it was much darker, and we used the big telescope.  Venus and Mercury had set by then.  Jupiter was lower down, but still visible: we could see all four Galilean moons, and some dark bands on the planet itself.  Mars by then had moved close to the zenith.  Last time we tried to view it at that angle, we couldn’t see through the finder, so we bought a 90 degree adapter for it at AstroFest a few weeks ago.  It works!  We got to see the red planet as a disc.  Beautiful.

We had a quick look at the Pleiades, as they were in the vicinity.  My god, it’s full of stars!

We then used the autofinder to try for Uranus.  We could see a bright object near the centre of the field of view.  It could have been a very small disc of a planet, or just a point source of a star.  I choose to believe it was Uranus.

So, definitely four planets, and maybe even five.

new toy

AstroFest has a lot of exhibitors.  Last year we bought a small SeeStar telescope, and a dome for the big telescope we bought back in 2020.  This year we were a little more restrained.  

We had recently been looking at Jupiter with the big telescope; we had also tried for Mars.  But Mars is high in the sky at the moment, which means the telescope is almost vertical.  We have a 90 degree adaptor for the eye piece, but not for the finder scope.  It was too difficult to limbo down to look up through the finder, so we didn't see Mars.  Thanks to this year's AstroFest, we now have a 90 degree adaptor for the finder, too.

A quarter of a century ago, August 1999, we viewed the total eclipse of the sun.  For that, we bought a Lightline Solar Projector, a clever cardboard tube and lens contraption that allowed us to project an image.  We have been using it since to view the sun, but it's not particularly good for seeing sunspots, and is getting a bit battered.  We have a solar filter for the new SeeStar telescope, which gives us a spectacular view, but takes a while to set up.  While wandering around the exhibits, I saw a variety of "solar binoculars", binoculars with built-in solar filters, so they can be used to directly view the sun (and nothing else!)  I was debating whether to get a pair, when one of the other attendees struck up a conversation.  She said she had bought a pair previously, and had spent many a happy time watching the sun.  She convinced me, so I bought a pair.

The weather forecast is cloudy for the next week.  So I'll have to wait to try them out!

out of this world problems

Jupiter has been prominent recently.  We observed it using our SeeStar telescope.  It was a visible disc, but a bit small, with faint bands juuuust visible.

Last night was clear, so we decided to try using the big telescope in the dome to get a better view.

Last night was cold.  The dome was frozen shut.  Oh well.

Jupiter and Venus on camera

Jupiter and Venus were extremely bright in the sky tonight, but even so, I was surprised I got this picture with just a hand-held Pixel 4a.

18:51 GMT; bright planets, despite all the light pollution

’Twas the night of conjunction

… and it was cloudy, so we couldn’t see anything.  I’m so glad we looked yesterday, which was still pretty fantastic!

Stellarium lets us see how much closer the planets were:

conjunction (same scale as yesterday)

And look how much the moons have moved in a day!

’Twas the night before conjunction

The conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn is tomorrow.  But that means they are pretty close today, so we had a look. 

I spotted Jupiter immediately, and was looking for the fainter Saturn nearby, but couldn’t see anything.  So I looked through my binoculars at Jupiter, and Saturn popped out, so close, just above Jupiter!  Wow!  

I still couldn't see it with the naked eye, even knowing where to look, because it was so close to Jupiter it was being drowned out.  (My other half could see it, but he has better eyesight than me.)

Here are a couple of (highly cropped, but unenhanced) photos, taken with a Canon EOS 20D and a Canon EF 100-400mm zoom lens. 

17:32 GMT looking west; 400mm focal length; f/5.6; ISO-1600 equivalent;1s exposure

17:35 GMT looking west; 260mm focal length; f/5.6; ISO-1600 equivalent;1s exposure

When we saw these photos, we went, “Wow, are those Jupiter’s moons?”  Then we zoomed in, and saw a very faint dot to the right of Saturn, almost invisible, but in the same place on both photos: “Wow, is that Titan?”

So we went to Stellarium to find out.

17:30 GMT: Jupiter, its four Gallilean moons, and a star in line to the left, below Saturn and Titan.

So, yes! We had indeed seen Jupiter (naked eye), plus very close-by Saturn (binoculars), and then plus Callisto, Ganymede, Europa, and Titan (photography).

And tomorrow is conjunction, so Jupiter and Saturn will appear even closer together in the sky!

bigger bird feeder

When we bought our new telescope at the weekend, we got a few peripherals, including a gadget to attach a smartphone camera to the eyepiece.  The gadget also fits binoculars, and I’ve been playing around with it today.

This is the view of our birdfeeder with the phone camera, and, from the same spot, with the camera attached to a pair of 8x42 binoculars:

small, far away

through binoculars

So, once there are actually some birds around, I should get some much better pictures.

The picture through the binoculars is cropped, because it gets a circular image.  Amusingly, from a distance, if you squint, the full picture looks a bit like Jupiter on its side:

not Jupiter!

Later in the evening, I tried the gadget on some 15x70 binoculars, looking at Venus, which is very bright in the west at the moment:

Venus, smeared; 17:33 GMT

Hmm.  Even firmly bolted to binoculars firmly bolted to a tripod, the camera wobbles when I touch the shutter button.  So I’ve now ordered a bluetooth remote shutter control…

Once the telescope is all properly aligned and calibrated, I'll try it on that, too.

by Jove!

You think you know something, then you see it from a whole new perspective, and it changes completely!

Jupiter from the bottom

Venus, Jupiter, Mercury

figure from Scientific American blogs

Tonight sees three planets close together in the western sky: Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury. Our new binoculars got their first outing, and we saw the triple very clearly.  Beautiful.

This also gives us an indication of how good these binoculars are for stargazing: with my small birdwatching 8x42 pair, I could see Venus clearly, Jupiter just, and Mercury not at all. With these new 15x70s I could see all three planets clearly.

just visible in the slightly cloudy western sky; Sun 26 May 2013, 21:51 BST

peek-a-boo Jupiter

This happened on Christmas Day, but I've only just come across it.

Rafael Defavari took a video of the moon occulting Jupiter.  It's marvellous, and made even more so by what you can see as Jupiter re-emerges from behind our moon:

Lunar occultation of Jupiter - 25 December 2012

The little dot just visible above-left of Jupiter is one of its moons: Europa.  And the darker dot on Jupiter itself is Europa's shadow!  (It's easier to see on the video.)

There's more info where I found out about this, at Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy site.

a four planet evening

A good evening's viewing tonight.  In the east, a brilliant Venus and Jupiter high in the sky (getting closer for the conjunction later this month), and down on the horizon, a much fainter but still clearly visible Mercury.

Then, turning to the west: twinkle, twinkle little Mars, like a ruby against the stars.  We just managed to get a quick look at it through the telescope before the clouds closed in.

Jupiter's moons

Which of Jupiter's moons did we manage to snap yesterday? More help on the web, from the Sky and Telescope site.

So it's Ganymede further out and Europa closer in, then. Callisto is too close to see in this:

Or is it? Enhance, enhance! (courtesy of Photoshop)

Now, with a following wind, I can convince myself there's a third moon snuggling up to the (now very evidently) over-exposed Jupiter. Also, we can see that the camera lens really is a bit rubbish -- with the red and blue splitting out. But still, pretty good with no (very) special equipment.

International Space Station (2)

I saw the ISS for the first time in April. We saw it again tonight, at around 19:45 BST, with a bit more technology to hand. I used the "Space Junk lite" app on my Android phone to check where the ISS was going to appear -- although it was so bright and obvious that wasn't really necessary (but it's a cool app anyway).

We also had a camera ready. We have a venerable old Canon EOS 20D digital SLR (2005 vintage), with a 18-55mm lens, here set at about 24mm.

The camera wasn't moved between the first two pictures, so the star field is the same, showing the very clear streak from the rapidly moving (from right to left) space station. (Click to embiggen, and see the stars.)

The camera was moved for the final shot, which shows the ISS fading from view as it moves out of the sunlight.

We then went back indoors, and watched the last ever Sarah Jane Adventures episode, over tea. Sniff.

Jupiter was very bright, so a bit later (around 21:30 BST), when we realised just how well the ISS shots had come out, it was time to try to photograph it with a bigger lens, a Sigma 70-300mm, set at 300mm.

Okay, so not the sharpest focus, but, OMFSM, two moons as well! We can stand in our front garden with a commodity camera and lens, and snap Jupiter's moons.

Mercury

I've been admiring the brilliant Jupiter in the night sky for the last few months. So I was interested to read on Bad Astronomy that Jupiter would pass close to Mercury in mid-March before disappearing from our skies for a while. I've only (knowingly) seen Mercury once before, in a marvellous four-planet alignment in 2002. Phil Plait mentioned looking on 14 or 15 March, but those nights were cloudy. Last night was clear, however, so I looked out, just after 7pm. I saw a really bright planet, and then another, slightly fainter one down in the twilight, a couple of degrees below it. Aha, I thought, Jupiter, with faint Mercury close to the horizon -- no wonder it's so difficult to see!

But a quick check in the astronomy mags showed I had it backwards. The higher, brighter spot was tiny Mercury, and the lower, fainter one was Jupiter. Given how bright and easily visible Mercury was, I'm sure I've (albeit unknowingly) seen it many times before.

I didn't get to take a photograph, but here's one from Greg Parker that shows almost exactly what I saw (except for the skyline details, of course).