Venus & Jupiter Conjunction at 0.39 Degrees of Separation, Moderate Resolution | April 30th 2022

[MalVeauX]

Heya,

I took a stab at the Venus & Jupiter conjunction this morning. I couldn't do it in the dark due to my tree line not showing things under 14~17 degrees of elevation so I had to chance a daytime imaging session for this fun phenomena. I tried in 742nm infrared first but couldn't make out any bands on Jupiter. Yet, when I looked at it in 500nm or 600nm with a green or red filter, I saw bands fairly well. So I just imaged the two planets together in red wavelength since my morning seeing is ok, but not great, with some sunlight involved. I stacked 2800 frames to build up enough signal to noise ratio to balance the brightness of the two plants in post since Venus is significantly brighter. My image scale is 0.59 arc-seconds per pixel, so I think I ended up with a 0.39 degree separation of the two. I enjoyed seeing them in the telescope visually first and then imaged for a little bit to see if it was possible. I managed to get hints of brightness of Io (right) and Ganymede (left) and balanced the brightness of their `smudges' to be able to at least detect them and their relative positions. I had to do extensive clean up and masking to get a dark background as I had some clouds and the original exposure was more of a very light grey tone of the day sky. The pixel positions are real for my time frame of 0833 eastern time from Florida with any differences beings secondary to stacking results. I captured this in narrowband with a 150mm F8 refractor and an IMX253 sensor (3.45um pixels, mono) using an Astronomik red imaging filter, so the native image is black & white due to imaging in daytime conditions with a single filter wavelength. I was going to attempt color, but figured it wouldn't work out and didn't want to lose more time.

My daughter and I enjoyed seeing it in the eyepiece as well as on the screen this morning.

Got a mention on SpaceWeather, lol, sigh, not a lot of people seem to have captured this in significant resolution.

https://spaceweather...th=04&year=2022

Results:

 

False Color:

 

Previous Night Line Up:

 

Equipment:

 

0833am Eastern Time | We imaged in daylight!

150mm F8 Refractor (old Celestron CR150HD) with extensions to reach focus (I shortened this OTA in the past)

Astronomik red imaging filter (in my manual filter wheel)

IMX253 sensor (1.1" 3.45um mono)

90 seconds of total time, stacked all 2800 frames

 

[orion25]

Nice work, cool rig and beautiful little girl! I had fun viewing and imaging the conjunction from just north of you in Georgia.

Cheers!

Reggie  

[Stu]

Great job @MalVeauX. Interesting write up; you had to put some effort in to capture them didn’t you, sounds challenging. Really good result though, and it sounds and looks like the two of you had fun observing them too 👍👍

[JeremyS]

Excellent 👍🏻

[callisto]

Great image... thanks for sharing 👍

 

Mark.

[Jeff5567]

Very good......been meaning to get out of bed to try this myself. Thanks for sharing 

[Pete Presland]

Very nice captured, great to share these events with younger eyes