We Love The Stars Too Fondly

Two days to go. Saturday, a chance to get some work done and bring out the big guns.

There’s tonight’s moon, for starters. Getting brighter every night!

With the wide angle lens, which gives you a good idea of what you would see with the naked eye, the six-day old moon is still heading east every day, with the two planets getting almost too close to separate with the naked eye. That’s them just to the right of the telephone pole, under the wires. (As with all of these photos, click on the image to see the full-sized image.)

Zooming in a bit we can see that they’ve now VERY close together. Compare these pictures to those from the past couple of weeks that I’ve posted here.

Zoomed all the way in with the 300mm telephoto lens, a one-second exposure shows Saturn above, Jupiter below, with what looks like three of the Galilean moons heading away from Jupiter at the eleven-o’clock position, but is actually four.

(Image from Sky & Telescope’s “Jupiter’s Moons” app)

The three dots we see, from the outside in, are Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa & Io being too close to each other to separate with this equipment.

What happens when we take a longer exposure? Well, we know that the “pinpoints” will start to turn into “trails” because the planet we’re on is spinning. But we’ll also collect a bit more light and detect things that are more dim…

Blow this 3.2-second exposure up. There’s Jupiter and it’s moons, Saturn… and a very faint dot/trail just to the left of Saturn. I do believe that’s Titan, the largest of Saturn’s moons!

So, what about these “big guns?” It was time this afternoon to do some serious cleaning on the big telescope, which has been sitting out on the back porch being neglected for a couple of years. How did that work out?

Gobsmacked. Mind blown. Amazing!

At both low and medium power, the two planets fit into the field of view easily. (They cover a much smaller field of view than the full moon, which just fits into the low power lens’ field of view.) The four Galilean moons are easily separated and visible, even Io and Europa which were so close together at that time. There are bands visible in the atmosphere of Jupiter. Saturn’s rings are clearly separated from the disk of the planet, and Titan is clearly visible. Probably also visible was Rhea, Saturn’s second largest moon.

They’re each just gorgeous to see in live through the telescope all by themselves. To see them both together in the same field of view, along with their moons, it’s almost like some kind of special effects production.

I still have to find the camera attachments and gear that will let me connect my Canon DSLRs directly to the telescope, so I couldn’t try to use those cameras to capture and share the scene. But… I’ve noticed other folks posting pictures they’ve taken just by holding their cell phone cameras up to the telescope lens. Would something that simple work?

It turns out the answer is a “definite maybe.” Since I was expecting absolutely no success, the fact that I got anything at all is better than that. While it still wasn’t full dark, there was a definite vignette effect with the iPhone camera sensor picking up only light from the circular eyepiece opening, so it’s like looking through a peephole.

Oh, and since we’re looking through a Newtonian telescope, the direction up & down is flipped. Saturn’s on the bottom now, and Jupiter’s moons (HEY, we can see the separation between Io & Europa!) extend downward.

The other thing I noticed as it got darker was that, with luck, on the more in-focus images, you can see some elongation of Saturn from the rings. And there to the upper left in this image – Titan.

You will see lots of fantastic pictures from folks with amazing astrophotography setups, big apertures, great camera gear, the whole system finely tuned. Revel in those photos, let yourself go with all of the “oohs” and “aaahs.” I will be right there with you.

And you can (and SHOULD!) go out over the next few nights to see the two planets with your naked eye. Even just as two bright planets become one really bright “double planet” and then separate again, it’s a once in a lifetime spectacle that you can see by yourself. Take the opportunity while you can, it won’t be around for over sixty years again. (I’m looking forward to the repeat, but I’ll be 125 years old by then, so I might not be lugging around as much photography gear.)

If you have a pair of binoculars or a telephoto lens on a camera, use that as well. It’s all good.

Clear skies!

The seeing was good, practice is helping with the eternal focusing issues, and it’s really late so here are some pictures! They’re good, so I’m going to give you the full resolution versions – click on them to see them full sized.

When the focus is good on the wide-angle lens, it’s wonderful. There are some lens flares from the street light just off to the left, but you can see how the Moon is now up and to the left of Jupiter and Saturn, while they’re getting closer to the horizon. Don’t worry, they’ll still be easy to see for the next couple of weeks, but don’t dawdle after sunset!

The Moon is looking fine.

The Moon being there and bright helps to focus accurately and then move over to the stars of the show. Full sized you can easily see all four Galilean moons around Jupiter – Io at the lower right, outward from the planet at the upper left are Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto way out there. On Twitter, there’s a simple bot that posts the current positions every three hours.

Better results tonight – if you’re on the West Coast, go look *NOW* and you can probably still see it. (Assuming your skies aren’t cloudy, of course…) Look to the southwest!

Gorgeous! Jupiter (brighter) on the bottom, Saturn on the top.

Zoomed in (300 mm telephoto lens on a Canon Rebel XT) you can clearly see a couple of the moons on Jupiter.

Go look! Or if it’s too late tonight for you or it’s cloudy where you are, look tomorrow! Or Thursday!

Closest approach will be next Monday, December 21st!

The good news is that it was crystal clear tonight.

The bad news is that I need to get out a little earlier, before Jupiter and Saturn get down into the trees. They’re moving toward the west, heading for the morning sky not too long after the conjunction, which means they’re setting earlier than they did a month or two ago, or even a week or two ago. So they were sort of “down among ’em.”

The worse news was that it was again windy as hell, which means that any kind of a long exposure with the telephoto lens extended out had the camera bouncing around like it was on a roller coaster.

Yeah, don’t think NASA’s going to be asking to use that photo any time soon.

But if you’re dedicated and persistent (as opposed to stubborn and pig-headed – it’s a very fine line) you might get one decent photo at maximum magnification.

It’s a short one, so this photo didn’t collect as many photons as the ones on Thursday, but you can see that they’re getting closer.

Tomorrow we try again…