Category: Birding

The two inner planets are very low in the western sky very close together. Last night they were a Moon’s width apart, tonight apparently a little more. I set up at the high point in Wellington Hills near the Fellowship Church at sunset. By 8:28 I spotted Venus in the binoculars. It took another 8 minutes to spot Mercury. Here is one of a bunch of pictures, mostly unsuccessful. Both planets are in the lower right, Venus is the brighter while Mercury is above it at about 11 o’clock.
I decided to show the entire frame instead of cropping so you might have a better idea of scale. This was a 300mm zoom with a DSLR. 1/160s at f/5.6 ISO 3200. Processing in Lightroom.

 

It was a hot and muggy night. And there may have been chiggers too. Its for sure the air was not as tranquil as I hoped. However, I was able to capture these images of three of our neighbors.All images where taken in red light with my monochrome ASI120MM. In reverse order from how the shots were taken, Saturn was the star of the evening with detail showing in the rings and the belts in the atmosphere.and I think I might be able to make out a little of the polar hexagon. Mars is getting farther away quickly and so is smaller than a month ago. It is also now showing a gibbous phase instead of the “Full Mars” of a few weeks ago. I was able to get some detail but Mars always leaves you wanting more. Finally, Jupiter is past its prime for the year. Getting lower in the west every day it suffers from more air. It was lower than the other two and that is saying something. Also it doesn’t record as well in red light for some reason. Note the two large storms on Jupiter. I’d say one was the Great Red Spot but it should not have been there when the shot was taken so I don’t know what they are.

I wanted to image Mars & Saturn last night but things got in the way. The I woke up at 2:15, seemed to be awake, and remembered that I had left the gear in the car and so I took off for the soccer fields behind First Security on Highway 10. Let me tell you, you can have the place all to yourself at 3 AM. The seeing was not so good and both planets were past the meridian and getting lower with each minute so I eschewed the Barlow and shot prime focus. After shooting the planets I tried a couple features on the Moon, Grimaldi and Byrgius. I hope you like.