Category Archives: Weather

And now, having passed in the night (literally), Jupiter and Venus move apart again until next time. (Which is next year.)

Wednesday, July 1st

It was mostly cloudy. Good for moody, spooky pictures of the moon rising, not so good for watching planets.

Thursday, July 2nd

Back to “clear and a million” in Southern California.

Dusk is a magical hour for photography. Jupiter’s heading quickly toward the sun from our perspective while Venus is following more slowly. Relative to Venus, Jupiter was at about 11:00 a week ago, now below 3:00.

Still no good, detailed, focused close-up pictures, but even when it’s a bit fuzzy you can still see some of Jupiter’s moons.

Friday, July 3rd

Everything’s silhouetted against the twilight.

The planets peek out from behind the infamous palm tree.

And again, Galilean moons start to pop out as the lights fade.

Again we have several layers of high clouds, so the Venus & Jupiter show was spotty at best. They could be seen, but only very intermittently and then only because they are bright enough to shine through thin cloud bands. Along with the clouds has been an uncommon amount of humidity for Southern California. We’re not talking Florida or Louisiana humidity (or Missouri, or Virginia, etc etc) but it’s considerably higher than we ever usually get. And for some reason, lots of mosquitoes. Between last night and tonight, my legs and arms look like pin cushions.

The heavier clouds are coming in from the east, where the almost-full moon is trying to rise. I never actually saw the moon, but the battle between it and the clouds was a thing of beauty. The collateral damage that illuminated the herringbone cloud patterns above were amazing.

Approximately 0.3° separation. For reference, the sun and moon average around 0.5° in apparent diameter, so either would cover both Venus and Jupiter if they happened to be in the right spot tonight. (Now THAT would be a rare event!) You can see how over the last eleven days (June 19th, June 20th, June 21st, June 22nd, June 25th, and June 29th) they’ve gotten closer and closer.

(Image: Weather Channel app)

Of course, Murphy rules. Starting about 14:00 it was getting cloudy and by 17:00 it was raining.

Here’s that “usual” view to the west from our front yard at 17:55. I was not happy.

By 20:00 it had started to clear a bit. I started to have hope.

By 20:40 there were just a few thin, high clouds over most of the western sky. There were our jewels!

Where last night Jupiter was at “the 11:00 position” compared to Venus, tonight they’ve passed each other and Jupiter is in “the 1:00 position.”

The pictures don’t do it justice. It was beautiful, two bright jewels side by side in the darkening twilight.

As it got darker, the clouds started to move back in a bit, but Venus and Jupiter also looked that much brighter against a dark background.

Zoomed in with the 300mm lens, you can’t see the crescent shape of Venus, but you can see the Galilean moons of Jupiter. (And a funky, ghostly lens flare from Venus, which does in fact show the crescent shape.)

I pulled the small telescope out, the two planets fitting easily into the field of view. In the scope, the thin crescent shape of Venus was obvious, Jupiter showed as an oblate sphere with several bands visible, and the four Galilean moons were very clearly visible. It was spectacular.

Fitting the camera to the small scope again proved problematic. Focus is part of the problem, exposure is another. While I played around with both and took a lot of photos at different exposures and different focus points, I never hit that sweet spot. This image was the closest I came. There is enough detail on Venus (lower left) to see a bit of the crescent, and if you blow the picture up to full size, you can see just a hint of the Galilean moons. Most noticeable is the color difference – Venus is bright white, while Jupiter shows some pastel color.

The Long-Suffering Wife came out to take a look, and the Youngest Daughter took a look before heading back home. (Jessie did not look, being ever so Bohemian with that “been-there, done-that” attitude.) Then, just 45 minutes after it started, a good two hours before Venus and Jupiter would actually set, the clouds started rolling back in and it all vanished.

I’m glad that the Fates parted the clouds long enough for me to get a glimpse tonight. It was magnificent!

If you didn’t see it tonight, keep watching! The two will start to pull apart from each other, but they’ll still be bright in the west after sundown for weeks to come. There will be another grouping when the young moon moves back into the evening sky in about three weeks. Venus and Jupiter will get back together in the pre-dawn morning sky in October, being separated by only 1° on October 26, 2015. Next year we’ll do it again, and on August 27, 2016 Jupiter and Venus will be separated by less than 0.1°, a third of their current separation.

Keep watching the skies! (And be patient if it’s cloudy.)

“Keep on target…” Starting about ten days ago (June 19th, June 20th, June 21st, June 22nd, and June 25th) we’ve checked in on the local celestial mechanics at play for our edification and enjoyment.

In the Sixteenth or Seventeen Century we would have been doing science. In the Twenty-First Century we can fling robots across the solar system and hit a spot the size of a baseball field from over three billion miles away. Today we know exactly how puny we are in an incredibly vast universe, but we also can be pretty clever little primates, so we can admire the dance of the planets on an intellectual level while also just loving the sight of the pretty lights in the sky.

We’ve still got some monsoonal weather being sucked up from Baja, so one must be patient and wait for them to shift about a bit. Do you see Venus and Jupiter? Neither did I.

There they are! Still peeking through a high layer of clouds painted pink by the sunset, but there where they should be.

Then, of course, a band of clouds will move back in front of them.

It does make for a beautiful sunset. Much better than the “clear and a million” version, as long as the scattered clouds stay scattered.

Even in the early parts of civil twilight we can see Galilean moons lined up around Jupiter.

As it gets darker, they really stand out.

They’re less than 1° apart tonight, and will be even closer tomorrow night.

Dancing with the cloud bands.

Along with the clouds came some humidity and an uncommon number of mosquitoes and bugs. As lovely as it would be to sit out and watch these guys set, I think I’ll wait until tomorrow night and pick up some DEET and a telescope.

Let’s hope it’s clear. If it’s clear where you are tomorrow shortly after sunset, take a look. If you can take a picture, feel free to share it here in the comments!