We Love The Stars Too Fondly

This will be the last night that I can fit all of these objects into the 70mm “wide” angle view on the 70-300 telephoto lens.

Venus (way down in the lower right) will only be visible for a few more nights before reappearing in a couple of weeks in the morning sky.

The moon moves quite a bit from night to night, so tomorrow it will be high out of this view at sunset.

Only tiny, faint-ish Mercury, visible just to the right of the top of the cedar tree at the center of the frame, will be more or less in the same position for the next few nights, before it follows Venus toward the morning sky.

A short exposure shows the moon for the crescent it is, easily visible now, a delight to see hanging in the evening sky. Blow up the picture to see craters and details along the terminator.

A longer exposure will show how the dark part of the moon is partially visible in reflected earthshine. This has always been one of my favorite, simple things to see in the night sky.

Farewell, y’all. Without a doubt your travels and Newton’s laws of motion will bring you back together again some day soon.

Let’s up the difficulty level tonight thanks to celestial mechanics!

The last three nights I’ve been posting pictures of Venus (bright, but fading) and Mercury (dim-ish, never easy to see) as they move close to each other in the evening twilight. I’ve mentioned how it’s a race and a balancing act, trying to wait until it’s dark enough so that dim Mercury isn’t washed out in the sunset sky, while also looking and finding them early enough so they haven’t set.

Tonight the 34-hour-old new moon is moving into the picture, below Venus. Which means that it will be setting before the two planets. In addition, I don’t believe that I’ve ever seen a 34-hour-old new moon. At that point it’s close to the sun, it’s only illuminated on a razor thin line of a crescent, and as a result it’s very dim, even harder to spot in some ways than Mercury.

So, earlier, brighter sky, dimmer object, closer to the horizon – NO SWEAT! Let’s do this!

For reference, last night’s pictures were taken between 20:41 and 20:50. Sunset both nights was about 19:55. But that’s probably too late to see the moon. So this picture was taken at 20:33. Venus is visible. With the naked eye, I could not see the moon or Mercury. But I shot a quick series of pictures anyway, cautious that the moon might be already disappearing.

Then I grabbed the binoculars. Holy guacamole, Batman! Mercury’s there, a bit more distant from Venus than yesterday, higher. But the moon? Stunning. A hair-thin crescent floating just above the trees. Now that you know where to look, can you see them in this first picture? (Click on it to blow it up full sized.)

20:34, and I can just start to see both Mercury and the moon with the naked eye.

20:35 – I’ve zoomed in on the moon. Oh, and by the way, Eid Mubarak!

20:36 – getting a touch darker, contrast getting better. Now knowing where the moon is it’s easy to spot. Mercury still dim and hard to spot – it’s right about on the vertical center line of the picture, just above the level of the top of the cedar tree on the left. See it?

20:37 – the slightly larger picture. For the record, I was using the Canon Rebel XT camera with a Tamron 70-300mm zoom lens. This picture was taken at a 100mm focal length. Pictures #1, #2, and #4 were at about 130mm, and #3 (the closeup of the crescent moon) was at 300mm. Each of these pictures is the best of a bracketing set starting at about 1/2500 second and going through about 1/4 second. In this twilight, the short exposures are really dark, the long exposures are totally washed out and bright, but in between lies the promised land. There are about 12-14 pictures in each set and it takes about sixty seconds to shoot it and set up for the next set.

20:38 – will all of this fit into the frame in landscape mode? Yes, it will! Again, Mercury just higher than the top of the cedar tree, Venus about to disappear behind that big pine tree on the right, and the moon about to disappear behind those trees at the bottom.

20:39 – the best picture of the night! About to start losing objects behind trees, but it’s finally dark enough to see them all! We’re winners!

20:40 – remember when I said that last night’s range of 20:41 to 20:40 probably wouldn’t work? Good planning! Say goodnight to the moon! Ditto for Venus, Mercury, and the mosquitoes! (I don’t know what’s up with the mosquitoes. We rarely have a problem with them, but they’re out in force this year. My hands are covered with bites from the last two nights!)

Mercury’s climbing (slowly-ish).

In mid-twilight (20:40 after sunset at 19:55) Venus stands out, but Mercury is just becoming visible.

It’s passed Venus now, higher and to the left.

If you want a simple demonstration of the planets moving, just show someone matching pictures from the last three nights.

Ten minutes later, it’s easier to spot Mercury. But again, it’s a race between night and the horizon. It’s just not that far away from the Sun, and never will be from our viewpoint.

Venus, on the other hand, is diving toward the morning sky like a bat out of hell. Given the surface conditions on Venus, “hell” is a perfectly good description.

But for that couple of minutes they’re still high enough to be above the trees and hills, but it’s just barely dark enough to let them shine through.

Wait a day. It will change again.

Venus is tracking back toward the sun and sinking a little bit every night in the evening sky. Mercury is rising a bit each night toward its greatest elongation, the furthest it gets from the sun, which isn’t far.

Last night they were a dozen or so degrees apart. About 20:20 or so I started looking. Venus is easy to spot a couple times a year, Mercury is much more elusive. But this is an excellent opportunity using Venus as a guide.

Tonight…

Tonight it was closer to 20:30 when I was able to spot Mercury with the naked eye. It had moved closer and a bit to the left of Venus since last night. I could see it easily in binoculars.

As it got darker we were in a race. It was easier to see as it got dark, but the pair of planets were also setting.

This is probably one of the best opportunities that I’ve ever had to spot Mercury. It will continue to drift upward in the evening sky until June 4th, when it be 20° away from the Sun, after which it will rapidly follow Venus toward the morning sky on the other side of the Sun.

If you want to see the two planets together, go take a peek over the next couple of nights. By tomorrow Mercury will appear level or above Venus, but that’s due to how fast Venus is moving toward the Sun.

EXTRA CREDIT – Saturday and Sunday you’ll start to see a very thin crescent moon popping into the picture!

Forget about that “perfect” fantasy. But practice does make things better.

My ISS photos (before last night) have recently sucked. You haven’t seen them because they’ve all be blurry and out of focus. This is because the original lens on my Canon Digital Rebel was something like nine years old, had taken literally tens of thousands of pictures on three continents, and started to finally act glitchy. I got a replacement which is new and fancy – and wants to do EVERYTHING for me instead of giving me override capabilities and control. In particular, it wouldn’t let me set the focus easily and then in the dark, when doing astrophotography, it wouldn’t focus on it’s own worth beans.

Out in broad daylight in auto focus mode? It’s a miracle, incredibly fast, some image stabilization built in, really sweet. In the dark when I simply want to set it to ∞ and leave it alone? Meh. But I’ve been working on it and finally started to get some good results last night.

Tonight’s ISS pass was much lower and dimmer than last night.

(Image from Heavens-Above.com)

Not worth the bother? Maybe I’ll just go watch it and not try to take pictures. (I can still do that, you know!) But then I realized that we might get clouds moving in for the next couple of nights when there are slightly better passes, so it might be now or wait a few weeks. I went with “now.”

I really like the results. I’m going to give you the 7.1MB and 9.7MB files (because I like you!) instead of compressing them down to under 2MB. Click on them to look at or download the full-sized images – it’s worth it.

As you can see, much dimmer than last night. But looking at the original images (this is a composite of ten 15-second exposures) you can actually see it rising from right behind Castle Peak. Very nice! And with all of the trees and rooftops lit up by street lights and yard lights and other house lights on the hilltops off in the distance, I really like the colors and framing. I like this picture a lot.

Coming around the right side of that big pine tree on the left (the first picture shows ISS disappearing behind it from my viewpoint about fifteen seconds earlier) I was able to track ISS all the way until it disappeared on the right behind our cedar trees. Most importantly, the focus is great, so I may have (“Don’t get cocky, kid!”) figured that part out.

The other really neat thing about this second image, which I take for granted but which many folks wouldn’t, is how it shows the stars spinning around the Polaris, the North Star. If you haven’t ever seen or noticed it before, blow this image up to full size and then look at the stars on the left and right. They’re all trails, little curved arcs, since the camera was fixed and the planet it was fixed to was spinning. The further you are from the pole, the longer the trails. Look at the first picture to see this demonstrated as well.

But in this picture, there are curved arcs on the left, right, top, and bottom. But near the center, those arcs get shorter and shorter and there’s one star that’s a dot with no trailing at all. You’ve found Polaris! It’s the star that’s at the “end” of the “handle” of the Little Dipper.

As the prophecy foretold…

Rising behind the stinking streetlight in the southwest. (At the bottom of that arc is Malibu…sort of.)

Setting behind the house off to the northeast. (Toward Salt Lake City at 17,500 mph.) Currently over Africa only 35 minutes after being over LA. Orbital mechanics, gotta love them!

These are all 13 second exposures, stitched together into one image using StarStaX.