For several weeks, Venus and Mars and Saturn have been visible in the pre-dawn eastern sky. Today at 5:49 am, a very clear pre-dawn sky allowed a view low in the east to see if Jupiter was also visible. Yes, it was. Planetarium software predicted this to be my ideal view. Getting a photograph was a challenge.
Venus has been a prominent early morning sight for several weeks. If you are an early-riser and look low toward east, you can’t miss it. It will be there until late summer or early fall. Less obvious in the same part of the sky are the planets Saturn and Mars. On 28 March 2022, the clear predawn sky even presented a thin crescent Moon below this grouping of those planets.
On successive mornings, Saturn and Mars approached closer to each other. This view on 3 April 2022 was photographed through a living room window. The green thing is a glass ornament. This was the only unobstructed viewpoint due to trees and rooftops.
It was a rainy morning on April 4. But, the sky was mostly clear on the 5th. Saturn and Mars were at their closest approach less than the diameter of a full moon.
Keep watching that part of the sky to the lower left of Venus. Jupiter will begin making an appearance. On 18 April 2022, these four planets will form a straight line like this.
The International Space Station passed over my part of the world recently. I like to watch it when the conditions are right. Sometimes, I set up the iPad for a time exposure. This time I recorded the event with a different camera setup. My Canon was on a tripod pointed at the west-northwest sky. Six exposures were made. Each was 15 sec in duration. Each was started 40 sec after the start of the previous one. The first two images were combined with software into this one image. It was a little after 8:08 pm local time. Other objects of interest in the image are Taurus in upper left, Pleiades a little below right from Taurus, Perseus in top center, and Cassiopeia right center.
During the intervening seconds before the third image, I turned the camera on the tripod to face northwest above Cassiopeia. I moved the camera and missed the fourth image.
Images five and six were with the camera pointing north-northeast toward the Big Dipper. The dipper points to Polaris. The Little Dipper is barely visible.
This was the first time I captured images from nearly horizon-to-horizon by moving the camera during the sequence. If you are viewing by phone or a tablet device, the details in the images might not show. A full-screen desktop view works best.
Perhaps you are familiar with the concept of a Solar Analemma. Set up a camera pointing toward the southern sky so it will record the position of the Sun. Take a picture of that same part of the sky at the same time every day for a year. Adjust for daylight saving time changes in the spring and fall. Some days will be cloudy. Enough clear days will allow images to capture the Sun’s location and resulting pattern in the sky over the course of the year.
The team of Alan Smith and Joe Startin of the Orwel Astronomical Society near Ipswich, Suffolk, UK, reported on their efforts to do just that in 2014-2015. Their story is here. They used a webcam pointing south controlled by a computer. It took a picture mid-day for a year. They created an animated GIF with the images. Below is a screen shot of their GIF after a year of solar images. It is called the analemma. The shape of the analemma is primarily due to two factors. The Earth’s axis is tilted with respect to the plane of its orbit, hence the up and down variation. And, Earth’s orbit is not circular causing the left and right variation. The Earth’s axial tilt also has an effect on the left-right variation. A more detailed explanation of the shape of the analemma can be found courtesy of Louis Strous of the National Solar Observatory, Sacramento Peak, NM.
There are 4 satellites in the GOES-R series. Initially named R, S, T, and U, their names are changed once checked out and in position 22,300 miles above the equator. The first in the series GOES-R was re-named GOES-16. It maintains a position above the equator at 75.2˚ west longitude and keeps watch on the Atlantic Ocean basin. The second in the series GOES-S was re-named GOES-17. It maintains a position above the equator at 137.2˚ west longitude and keeps watch on the Pacific Ocean basin. GOES-T is scheduled to replace GOES-S which has a malfunctioning system limiting its performance.
Our son-in-law works for a company that provides important support for the GOES satellites. He extended an invitation to us to attend the March 2018 launch of GOES-S at the Cape in Florida. We posted about that day in this blog entry. We were invited to attend the launch of GOES-T but COVID restrictions cancelled those plans for everyone. Online coverage let us watch the successful launch.
Launches are normally viewed from ground locations. Camera placements can provide dramatic views up close, through telephoto lenses miles away, and with on-board cameras. Our SIL sent a link to us from two camera views in space. The views were from GOES-16 and GOES-17. The images were captured by the two GOES spacecraft at 30 sec intervals. The video lasts 14 seconds and repeats the launch once.
How I See It 