did i really capture the planets around the sun in a photo? 25/5/2013

[simon]

hi all . I was relaxing I the sun yesterday messing with my camera on a sun lounger . I took a few pictures on the sun and was amazed when I put them on my pc with what I saw. i've checked on stellarium the positions for yesterday and wow it looks very close . or is this just a massive coincidence. 4 planets?

[nephilim]

Looks like it to me. Well done.

[Steve Ward]

They're pretty tough to see after the Sun has set and they're low near the horizon , the chance of catching them with the Sun high in the sky in a snapshot is rather remote I fear.

But I 'd love to be proved wrong.

[Moonshane]

they seem to correspond broadly with the diffraction rays from the iris. surely some sort of optical flaw or reflection? not sure why they would not be on every spike though).

[Steve Ward]

I guess the easy way to prove it is to pop outside and repeat the exercise . . . the planets will be in a different place today so it'll be easy to see if they still match up.

[Astrobits]

On the 25th Venus was approx 15 deg from the Sun, Mercury was 1 1/2 deg from Venus and Jupiter was 3 1/2 deg from Venus. Those relative positions do not match your photo which shows them to be roughly equidistant from each other. I suspect that you either have some hot pixels or as Shane says some form of artefact from the camera.

Nigel

[bish]

Probably some reflections. When I've photographed planets close to the moon at night I've had to blow the moon out for them to show up.

[Rosencratz]

Some of them might just be spots of cloud.

I'm surprised you can get anything when shooting at the sun tbh.