Jupiter-Mars Conjunction | Aug 2024

2024-08-17Jim R 20 Comments

The planets Jupiter and Mars were near each other in the early morning eastern skies during the first half of August. The morning of closest approach was 14 August. I used this conjunction opportunity to photograph the pair of planets each morning my skies were clear. I overlaid my photographs to show their progress. First, a few simulations for perspective on what was happening day to day as the planets moved. These images and videos are best viewed on a screen larger than a phone.

Here is a brief video of the orbits of the inner planets and Jupiter as seen from high above our solar system. The dates are in the top left corner. Notice the movements of Earth, Mars, and Jupiter have quite different speeds. Farther planets from the Sun move slower. The line of sight from Earth toward Jupiter aligns closely with Mars.

https://in-the-sky.org/solarsystem.php

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Lunar Occultation of Spica

2024-07-14Jim R 7 Comments

The Moon and Spica were well positioned on 13 July 2024 for viewing the occultation in the southwest sky. The weather cooperated with clear skies. A few minutes before 10 PM I went to the front sidewalk with my camera on a tripod. Starting at about 9:55, I captured an image about every 3 minutes. The position of Spica closest to the Moon was at about 10:05. As I watched the camera’s viewfinder, the star suddenly disappeared. I used software to align the images of the Moon in layers. Each layer was erased except for the star Spica so that progress of the Moon to cover it was clear.

ISS Solar Transit | 11 Jun 2024

2024-06-11Jim R 9 Comments

This afternoon soon after 3:52 PM local time, the ISS crossed the face of the Sun. The center line was a few blocks from my house. All I needed to do was step out onto the front sidewalk to record the event. The sky was clear giving a good view of the Sun through the modified eclipse glasses used to protect my camera. Here is the real time video of the transit. It lasted less than a second.

The ISS travels 5 miles/sec. I used iMovie to slow down the video to 10% of original speed.

Here is a screen grab near the end of the transit. The large solar arrays on the sides of the station are visible.

Moon Occults Antares | 23 May 2024

2024-05-24Jim R 2 Comments

During the evening of 23 May, I waited for the Moon to rise at 9:10 PM CDT. Prior to moonrise, Antares was in occultation by the Moon. This chart by Dominic Ford shows the region in dark blue where the occultation was visible. I am located near the blue dotted line at the upper left of the open end of the figure. As the Moon rose for me, occultation was over. But, I wanted to view the two bodies in close proximity to each other.

Fortunately, the weather cooperated with clear skies that evening. I walked down the street for a clearer view of the southeast horizon. By 9:28 PM, the Moon was emerging above a tree line. I zoomed in all the way. Exposing for the star completely overexposed the Moon. Exposing for the Moon caused Antares to disappear. I chose an in-between setting. Later, I adjusted the region of the star to make it more visible. The image shows a great amount of turbulence in the atmosphere since the Moon was only about 2˚ above the horizon.

Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks

2024-03-28Jim R 2 Comments

I took advantage of a couple of recent clear evenings to see Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks. The first was on 19 March 2024. A friend and I sat in the car out of the cold wind until the stars were obvious. Software told us where to look which made finding it with binoculars easy. The camera was on a tripod set for ISO 100 and 10 seconds. No stacking but a lot of software processing to get the comet visible.