Too much cloud in Brisbane for the occultation last night, but the last 3 mornings have had enough clear patches for me to capture Venus approaching Uranus.
This image shows the movement of Venus over 3 consecutive mornings as it closes in on the position of the much more distant Uranus. Its amazing to see how fast it moves over time. The separation between the two planets has decreased was about 3.5 degrees in the 13th, but it has reduced a lot over the subsequent two days. Venus is about 8800 times brighter than Uranus at the moment.
To make this image, I captured the two planets each morning using a series of 10x1sec exposures (with a tripod-mounted Canon 50D and 70-200mm telephoto lens @ 200mm, f/5, 1 sec, 1600 iso) which were stacked using DeepSkyStacker, and then I overlaid the images of Venus from the 3 mornings.
The two planets will be closest tomorrow morning, and they should be a nice view in binoculars !
