Just a quick post. May features four morning planets. I managed to see three of them this morning. Jupiter is the highest, Venus to its lower right, and Mercury still farther to the lower right. Here are two pics: first a wide angle shot then a close up taken with a 300mm zoom lens.
Mars is below and to the left, but I got up too late to see it this morning. Mars is not as bright and was overwhelmed by the approaching sunrise.
This morning gathering of planets is better seen from the southern hemisphere. I briefly discussed the reason for this in my previous post. The gathering continues for the next couple of weeks for early risers. Now to see if I can drag myself out of bed even earlier to catch Mars before it gets too bright!
Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicist Blog.
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7 comments:
Boppster...I think those are UFOs
Working at the observatory, we get photos the people don't understand submitted occasionally. As a sky photographer, I get them passed to me to look at.
I recently had a very interesting one. Someone took a picture of the March full Moon (remember the Super Moon?) and sent in his pics. He noticed a small object just off the limb of the Moon in his pictures and wanted to know what it was. This man was not a UFO nut...he was hoping he got a rare occultation of a star by the Moon but couldn't figure out what star it would be. Nothing on the charts was bright enough.
After looking at Moon maps, taking the date, time and location into account, I was able to figure out that he took the picture several hours after full Moon and was seeing a very high mountain peak catching sunlight that was just barely on the dark side of the Moon. He was disappointed with what I found. I thought it was a pretty cool example of the interplay of light and shadow on the Moon.
Btw, I agree with SER about the UFOs.
How early do you have to get up to catch Mars? Do you go back to sleep afterwards? I never really thought much about the sleep disruption/deprivation from photographing the night sky.
Orb's you never cease to make me laugh.
Why thank you. That's my intent.
;-)
Probably about 55-60 minutes before sunrise for Mars. I was up about 40 minutes early today. Don't know if I will make it tomorrow...long days at work today and more coming up. Big meeting this week.
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