Moon and Jupiter

[Moonman]

guys if it's not cloudy and your up the moon and Jupiter are closing in on each other.

The battery in my camera is flat "Doh"

But the views still good

:astron:

[westsky]

Hi Michael I have been watching these two all night, along with the clouds, they are getting very close now and the clouds are gone so I might be tempted to get the scope out and give the imaging a try.

David.

[ballaratdragons]

I've got fog, but I keep checking. I can see the moon through the fog but can barely see Jupe. It the fog settles I will be setting up the scope.

I watched the last one a couple of weeks ago and it was definately worth it.

[silvinator]

I saw my first lunar halo!!! And the fact that Jupiter was so close to the Moon tonight made it a very memorable moment :D I tried a few shots with the film camera so wait a few weeks for any results. Didn't have a wide enough lens to capture the whole halo and lo and behold, the dig cam had died grrr :stupid:

After waiting a bit for the dig cam to charge up, and watching with awe through the binos (what a site! they weren't that close, maybe almost half a degree methinks???, but close enough to make me go "wow!"), I had a brilliant idea. I jerry-rigged my binos to sit amazingly steady atop my camera tripod and aimed it at jupiter and the moon. Then I took my digi cam and aimed it as straight and steady as I could at one side of the binos. I managed to get a few shots and I would like to share one with you all just to demonstrate what can be done with limited equipment (so don't laugh :ashamed: ). This shot was taken at maximum zoom, at 400 ISO, f5.6, 1/400 seconds, time was 1:45am-ish (I think!! I didn't bother writing any details down and I'm having trouble remembering things now but it's roughly in that ball park). I also discovered that my bino's have severe chromatic aberration. Jupiter is the speck in the top right hand corner:

[rumples riot]

Well Peter (EXFSO) and I spent the night trying to image jupiter with my SCT at my place. I think I actually got one Avi that looks pretty good despite the aweful transparency. We had very high cloud, so while I struggled to get a sharp image on the screen we talked and joked about various things. Once I could not image any longer due to the neighbours tree, we decide to take a gander at the occultation through the ED80 (now mounted on the LX200) Even through the trees it gave a nice wide field view of the occultation. Worth the effort. Anyway it seemed like a good way to spend the evening.

[westsky]

Nice Silvie amazing how well that turned through the bino's.
believe me this was a tough shot I spent the best part of two hours trying to get the moon and Jup in the same exposure without overexposing the moon, here is the result
Taken through a 60mm F7 refractor with a 0.5 focal reducer so around F3.5 25 images stacked with the Meade LPI.
I gave it a bit of a touch up in Registax

David

[iceman]

That is BEAUTIFUL david! What a lovely shot.

It's nice to get them in the same exposure, but most people take 2 shots, 1 properly exposing the moon and 1 properly exposing Jupiter, and just overlaying them afterwards.

I saw them fairly close together driving home from sydney last night, but clouds kept covering them up.

[tornado33]

Heres my effort
http://www.users.on.net/~josiah/temp/moonjupiters.jpg
Canon EOS 300d and 400mm F6.3 lens
was cloudy and wet earlier on in Newcastle but cleared later, I had forgotten about the conjunction till I saw it come out of the clouds :)

[ving]

well done guys... I was going to stay up but after an early morning i decided on an early night. how close did it get in syd?

[seeker372011]

Not sure but this was at 10:54 pm last night.

...with the standard 55 mm Canon 300d lens

composite of two images

[[1ponders]]

It ended up a beautiful clear night here last night after getting lashed by some pretty awesome thunderstorms in the afternoon/early evening (hailstones twice the size of golf balls a couple of Ks away). Though I'd wait around to see what happened after the clouds cleared. It was certainly worth the wait.

Ended up taking my refactor out about 1:00 am to shoot of a few images of the conjunction. The final image is a composite of three @ ISO100. One for the moon, one for Jupiter and one for the Gallilian moons. Moon 1/250 sec, Jupiter 1/80 sec, G moons 1/5 sec. Masked and layered in PS, only adjustment was brightness and opacity if G moon and slight levels on the moon

Angular separtation 26' 28"

[robin]

Hi all...here's the scene from Warrnambool early this morning.Seeing was pretty good.Taken with a Nikon D100 digital camera @200th/sec @ 200iso thru a 10" Meade LX200GPShttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/makemineameade/JupiterA.jpg

[robin]

Oh what the heck....here's a montage of the previous occultation as seen from Warrnambool.Same gear,same set up,sensational seeing.http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/makemineameade/Occ1a.jpg

[silvinator]

Thanks David, taking that shot wasn't easy as I couldn't see the lcd screen properly because of the way the bino's were sitting on the camera tripod and my arms were in a weird position so the focus is soft. I'm just happy I managed to capture something of the event, even if it isn't a spectacular image :D The digital camera (or my picture taking) doesn't do the conjunction justice though. The image was definitely much crisper and clearer in the bino's then the picture lets on. What I saw through the bino's was similar to tornado's picture.

Hey Mike, I didn't think about doing seperate exposures! :doh: Thanks for the tip, I'll know next time.

Wonderful images everyone. Well done folks!

[iceman]

Robin and Paul, they are excellent shots! And seeker yours looks very nice, the clouds look eery.. just what I saw looking out the window while driving home.

When i arrived home cloud covered everything though :(

[Mombat]

I did the exact same thing as you silvie i gto some cable ties and strapepd the binos to the camera tripod and then tried to hod the camera steady. As soon as i can find then cable for the camera i'll post my attempt.

[acropolite]

Here ya go, a day too late, no real detail but I like it anyway.:camera:

[gaa_ian]

Well done folks
I particully liked your shot robin !
We had a good viewing up here in the NT despite a veil of high cloud.
Was particully memorable as we had a Noob .. 10yo astronomer with the GSO 8" Dob his dad bought for him (sometimes people listen to scope advice :)
Was a good result, for a wet season night.

[robin]

Thanks everyone.I liked your pic too Acropolite.Its nice to see close-ups,wide angles...whatever.Every one is out there having a go & producing all sorts of interesting shots.

[janoskiss]

Yeah, I like Acropolite's shot too. It's very out of this world, with the moon looking more like a sun, but the rest of the scene revealing that it's nighttime.

[Vermin]

That photo by Acropolite reminds me of this one I took a while ago:

http://www.webclot.com/images/DSCF0088_filtered.jpg

[RAJAH235]

Ving, here on the South Coast, would you believe, missed by that much! see pic. :D L.

[ving]

lol, thanks! :P
these digital cam people... what will they do next?

[gaa_ian]

A similar shot to seekers ...
Indicitive of the sky here at the time..
Photo by "Shaggy"

[gaa_ian]

With the Image this time
Hmmm... where did all those chunky pixels come from :confused: