Crescent Moon, Venus, Mercury & Jupiter:

[yeti monster]

Whilst not the best photograph I've ever taken, it does show the wonderful conjunction which was available to me this moning:

DSCF7004-04 by jessplop84, on Flickr

I'd been waiting for this one all week, getting up early and hoping to get something as the Moon waned and drew closer to the position it is in here. I had to battle against the dew, which is fearce here in the tropics, more like rain when you see how wet everything gets.

[Ewok]

Well worth the determination and dedication. Great image despite the sub tropical conditions.

[kris h]

Remember hearing about this on the last sky at night

Great image Y M

[yeti monster]

Once I've performed some Gimpery on a few of the images, things will be much more apparent, although, obviously, I prefer things straight from camera if at all possible.

[Nexus 6]

Excellent pic, I went down the lane 5 mins from the house at around 5.00 am but only managed to see the Moon and Venus with the celestron 15x70's.

Was still a great sight mind

[yeti monster]

I gave up with the bins, too many lenses to keep wiping!

[Ursa Major]

Nice image.

Can you just see mars to the top left of jupiter? Maybe.

[yeti monster]

I'm sure that's too much to hope for, especially in that light, but I'll have a look when I can get it on Gimp...

In the meantime, here's a tight crop, from a different image, via ACDSee (), if I squint and allow my imagination to run away with me etc.:

DSCF7014-Super crop by jessplop84, on Flickr

[Rob L]

Well done! I set the alarm for 5 this morning hoping for similar but the cloud had different ideas ;-(

Nice to see someone else managed it though, and I'll try again tomorrow, Tue am looks promising.

[brianb]

Nice group - not accessible to those of us in northern latitudes!

The King is coming back

[yeti monster]

Tomorrow is, I think, the last chance to catch the crescent moon, about level with jupiter. Probably by the time UK has rolled round, the moon will be new, but good hunting for the wee pebbles and that HUGE ball of gas.

[yeti monster]

I had a look this morning, Venus was showing, but there were obvious clouds that I could tell would provide severe disappointment, so climbed back into bed for another 40 minutes or so. On returning outside, it seems that I had made the correct choice.

I'm still hunting for any signs of Mars on the images, but I fear the quality is just too poor...

[yeti monster]

Just like Capt. Ahab, I are becometh obsessed with this, plus it is my last day at work (non-uniform day) and am eagre to pass time as productively as possible. To wit, I are stretching the bounds of rationality and, whilst trying to disprove what I am imagining that I am seeing, I am almost, but not entirely, convinced, that yon red planet Mars has indeed imprinted itself, albeit in the faintest and vaguest of manners, onto at least one of my photos.

The original:

DSCF7016 by jessplop84, on Flickr

The 'doctored' one, where I have used a clone of the Jupiter 'smudge' to mark where my twisted imagination believes Mars to be, which is in approximately the correct position, according to Stellarium:

DSCF7016-Mars location by jessplop84, on Flickr

[yeti monster]

Huge thanks to Laurie, aka Ursa Major, for spurring me into my investigation.

I am now satesfied that Mars did indeed make an appearance on not one, but two seperate images, taken at different zoomingses and a couple of minutes apart...

I have highlighted the 'suspected planet' on each image. As these appeared to be in the same position, relative to Jupiter, I went further.

Using Gimp, I layered one file over the other, resized the 'zoomed' image and made a slight rotation to get the same orientation of Moon and Venus.

Zoomed image:

DSCF7016-mars test IIa by jessplop84, on Flickr

Widefield image:

DSCF7014-Mars test IIb by jessplop84, on Flickr

Composite image:

YM conjuction 01-05-2011-mars test IIa by jessplop84, on Flickr

Whilst the lens on my fuji camera suffers from terrible curvature, it is clear without a doubt (to me anyway) that the 'susupected planet' isn't an artifact of either sensor or lens.

With this knowlage, I can now apply more serious photoshoppery to enhance the planets in the frame.

I is reet chuffed, so I is!