Jupiter & Mars Conjunction

[Scooot]

Took this through my 10” Dob with the canon attached to the Paracorr which increases the focal length to 1380mm plus a 2 powermate. The dob was on the EQ Platform. It’s a small stack of nine 4 second images with a cls clip filter. The planets are overexposed but it’s a good record of their positions with the double star like moons early Sunday morning.

[MarsG76]

Awesome... I took a few pics of it through the eyepiece with my iPhone than stacked them, came up ok... Not as good as yours but ok.

[Scooot]

Thank you @MarsG76 . I’m useless trying to use an iPhone through the eyepiece  

[MarsG76]

3 hours ago, Scooot said:

Thank you @MarsG76 . I’m useless trying to use an iPhone through the eyepiece  

It's a numbers game... Aim and when you see something appear on the screen, start shooting as many as you can and hope that a few will be ok to stack. Well that was my approach anyway. I don't normally image with a phone, but my imaging scope was busy on the dragon face subs and to be honest I was not keen enough (read: too lazy) to set up a whole imaging rig, CCD, laptop etc, on what would most likely npbe only marginally better... Definitely no detail, too low in the atmosphere, and Mars to far away.

Attached is what I came up with, with eyepiece FOV simulation.

 

[Stu]

Nice shot Richard. Was virtually impossible to catch any detail on Jupiter via the iPhone at that mag. I saw two bands visually but nothing else.

Your shot is a lot cleaner than my iPhone attempts and Mars looks a nice disk too.

[Scooot]

@MarsG76 & Stu they’re great iPhone shots. I could get some detail with shorter exposures. This is a single 1/45 sec. no moons though   was hoping to stack some but they won’t align.

You can see the extent the planets in the opening image are over exposed from the different sizes compared to this.  Only the edges were cropped in both of them, perhaps slightly more in the first.

[LukeSkywatcher]

I saw this conjunction this morning @ 7am. 

[Stu]

7 minutes ago, LukeSkywatcher said:

I saw this conjunction this morning @ 7am. 

They've opened out quite a bit now Paul, were around 12", now around 1.5 degrees. Still nice though.

[LukeSkywatcher]

2 hours ago, Stu said:

They've opened out quite a bit now Paul, were around 12", now around 1.5 degrees. Still nice though.

I didnt even know it was happening TBH. I just spotted the Moon, then Jupiter (no mistaking it). Then i saw a small yellow/orange dot which i knew had to be a planet, and thought it was too small to be Saturn, so it must be Mars. All this was naked eye. When i got home this evening i was going to check Stellarium to see if i was correct. 

I saw this thread and i was correct. 

[Pete Presland]

Very nicely captured, much better than what I managed as well.

[Scooot]

2 hours ago, Pete Presland said:

Very nicely captured, much better than what I managed as well.

Thank you Pete, if so that would be very unusual.  

[niallk]

Very nice! 

I only caught it naked eye, but pretty cool to see, then I checked out the orbital positions of Earth, Mars and Jupiter on Sky Safari to see where things are in relation to eachother and see a higher level view of the alignment

[Scooot]

Thanks Niall. Jupiter wasn’t that clear when I looked visually with the dob, I could make out some bands but wasn’t at its best. It was still quite low I think at the time and very windy. In fact it rained shortly after and I had to put the scope in the garage for a bit.

Sky Safari’s great isn’t it. I presume you went into orbit around something. I’ve just orbited the sun for that morning to have a look out of interest  

[Stu]

Just had a look at that as a result of these posts. Yes, interesting to see how the planets are arranged in their orbits and why we have just seen the conjunction. Cool  

[niallk]

Yeah, I just recently upgraded to the 'Pro' version, so I've been having some fun with playing with the extra features!

[Scooot]

11 hours ago, niallk said:

Very nice! 

I only caught it naked eye, but pretty cool to see, then I checked out the orbital positions of Earth, Mars and Jupiter on Sky Safari to see where things are in relation to eachother and see a higher level view of the alignment

I’ve just fast forward the time, set by the hour, to watch them move apart etc. When you get to August you see a comet shoot into the suns orbit, quite interesting to watch. It looks as if it gets very close to hitting Venus.

[orion25]

Great image, Richard. I braved the cold and took several images, some while the sky was still dark and a few just before daybreak. The "double-star" moons were unmistakable and beautiful.

Reggie

[krwitman]

Really superb capture!  Wind chils were below 0F so I just did a visual on this conjunction.  Thank you so very much for sharing!

[Scooot]

Thanks Reggie, when I first looked through an eyepiece the “double star moons” were striking and I was keen to capture them, hence the over exposed planets  

Thank you for your kind words @krwitman , it was tropical here compared to that, I’m not so sure I would have braved -17c.