Stars and Planets

Recently Mars and Uranus were "close" in the sky and I managed to get a shot.  It is great when a planet as easy to find as Mars, can act as a "landmark" to find another.

The other pair of photos is of the bright star Aldebaran with its accompanying star cluster called The Hyades.  I have identified the brightest stars of the Hyades with the letter "H".

Orion

Orion is one of the easiest constellations to find and, luckily for me, appears in the southwest sky which is the direction my windows face.

I was never able to capture the whole constellation in the frame but I could get the major stars and "objects" such as Orion's belt and sword.

You will need to click on the images to enlarge them.  Hopefully you have a touch screen or other way to further enlarge the first photo.  The four outer stars from upper left clockwise to lower left are:  Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, Rigel, and Saiph.  The inner stars can be seen better in the second and third photos.

Orion 

 

Orion's belt (first without names and then with names)

Orion's sword (first without names and then with names)

Saturn and Jupiter conjunction

Tonight is the night!!  Alas, the clouds are spoiling the fun of seeing the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter so I am consoling myself by doing this post with photos that I took last week on December 17th.

Captions are below each photo.  Please click on the photo to enlarge it.

Here is the lovely crescent Moon showing "earth shine", which illuminates the darkened area, and on the far right near the bottom of the image you can see Saturn above and Jupiter below.  

Here you see a close up of the two planets and even two of Jupiter's moons.  You can also notice that Jupiter shows as a circle (sphere) whereas Saturn's shape is elongated indicating the rings around the planet. 

More astronomical sights

After having managed to photograph Venus and The Pleiades recently, I thought I would post a few more night sky images.

(Please note that you can enlarge a photograph by clicking on it).

In late March the planet Venus could be seen above the beautiful crescent Moon as shown below.

Another exciting event was the conjunction of Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter.  These planets aligned in mid-April and I took the following photograph on April 16 around 4:50 a.m.  I do not usually get up so early but I figured this was worth it!

And finally, this was the biggest surprise for me! When I directly focused on Jupiter, I was astonished to find that its largest moons were visible and clearly identifiable as distinct bodies around the planet.

Venus and the Pleiades

April 3, 2020

I recently found out that during this first week of April, the planet Venus can be seen in "close proximity" to the star cluster known as The Pleiades (or Seven Sisters). I was lucky enough to get two nights when the clouds parted so that I could photograph them.  You will see how Venus "moves past" the cluster.

I did not use a tripod so the images are not the best but I was very excited to see The Pleiades as I had never seen them before, and in a city environment with lots of light, it was great to have Venus to guide me to them.

You can check out this article to see others' photos and learn more about these celestial bodies.

April 4, 2020