Venus - Jupiter Conjunction 1-2-08
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Here is a photo (best i could do !) of the close conjunction of Venus and Jupiter at just 0.6 degrees apart this morning.
They made a fine sight through a 10" reflecting telescope magnified 44x with a teleview 28mm Panoptic eyepiece.
This nicely framed the 2 planets in the eye piece.
Jupiter was showing all 4 moons on the one side of the planet as the conjunction was visible from my location here in Nhulunbuy Nt Australia.
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posted by NT Stargazer @ 6:17 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Ian, I have tell you a funny story. I woke up Friday morning about 5:30 a.m. It was a bit early (and cold here in Denver), but I got up and went out to my back deck in stocking feet and PJs. I could see the Moon, but it was hazy and Jupiter and Venus were too low. So I decided to go back to bed for 30-40 minutes. In the process I had woken my wife up and since she would get up at about 6 a.m. I asked her to wake me when she got up to take her shower. I went back to sleep.
Well, a bit later I got up and the sky was just beginning to lighten. I decided to climb onto my roof, which has a much better view of the Southeast sky (remember, I'm in Denver). At first the moon was kind of blurry and it seemed that Antares was too close to it, but I blinked my bleary eyes a few times and it cleared up. Then I saw Jupiter and Venus, which were gorgeous. All in all it was a marvelous view with crystal clear skies. Fantastic.
From one of the ventilation pipes on the roof I could hear our clock radio in the bedroom playing "It's a beautiful morning" by the Rascals. That seemed kind of strange but I can hear things from around the house, coming through the heater vents so it wasn't *that* strange.
Well, I decided to come down from the roof but I noticed that some guy was out running and stopped in front of my house to do some stretching. Then he noticed me and I guess he was a little concerned about some nut up on the roof, so he took off. About that same time a delivery man showed up and started bringing in one of those largish metal milk containers on a small dolly. But he appeared to come straight through my house into the back yard. Hey, what's going on here? Then as he appeared in my backyard, I noticed that someone else had begun constructing some kind of shed or carport smack in the middle of the yard! It already had a roof on it, and someone had just put in a wooden post next to it. Whoa! What they heck? How did they do this (and why) and how on Earth did they do it without waking us and the neighborhood up? And all since I was out there at 5:30 a.m. Something very strange was going on here.
Then I woke up and realized that it had all been a very realistic dream (at least the first part). By the time I actually did get outside (still in my PJs), it was too light and I had missed it! Dang! Later I also realized that although he first part of the dream was realistic (and under other conditions I might truly have had difficulty in distinguishing it from reality), it occurred to me that when I was on the roof in the dream, it was not cold and there was no snow. Truth is, it was actually about 10 F (-12 C) and both the roof and yard were covered with snow!
Well, I guess I didn't *really* see it, but it seemed like I did!
Larry Sessions
Denver, Colorado USA
http://sternmann.livejournal.com/
What type of camera did you use and what was the exposure
Larry
That is a very funny story !
I am sure that is one of the most interesting observations of the conjunction that anyone has experienced !
Pop
I used a Canon S2-IS handheld
Setting was Av with bracketing on.
So the camera took 3 shots each time at different Apertures.
If I had used a tripod I would have got a better result !
Well, the dream story is completely true and I'm sorry I missed the real thing. But already I have had some of my students email me and tell me that they really saw it, so not all was lost! BTW, I've made decent little astro shots of the Moon and bright planets with a cheap Olympus D-595, once I figured out the timer and started using a tripod. Frankly if I had tried a shot like Ian's without a tripod it would look at bit like two lightning bolts! I'm just not that steady any more!
Just one other interesting thing. On Friday night, after I had slept through the observations of the morning, one of my dogs kept running to the back door, thinking that someone had opened the garage door, but of course no one was there. Pretty soon I saw a flash of light through the window and I thought someone was outside taking flash pictures. How, odd, I thought. Then I heard the low rumble and realized what my dog was hearing was thunder! We had the strange experience of thunder and lightning in the dead of winter accompanied by several inches of new snow! Weird. I think I recall this happening only once before.
And you Aussies are probably sweltering in the heat!
Larry S.
Denver
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