The goddess of love, Jove, 7 Sisters, Eye of the Bull and the Hyades
Hello,
To clear the backyard trees, I set up my GEM in the lounge and poked the camera out of the window to photograph this very pretty and picturesque conjunction around 5:15am on the 4th July.
Canon 7D with 70-200 F4L
70mm at F5.6
10 secs, ISO400
Here is a stack of 10 frames with a single 10 sec frame for comparison. Unfortunately these shots were taken shooting into the light dome of the Brisbane CBD.
According to the oracle of Wikki: The Pleiades, companions of Artemis, were the seven daughters of the titan Atlas and the sea-nymph Pleione born on Mount Cyllene. They are the sisters of Calypso, Hyas, the Hyades, and the Hesperides. The Pleiades were nymphs in the train of Artemis, and together with the seven Hyades were called the Atlantides, Dodonides, or Nysiades, nursemaids and teachers to the infant Bacchus.
The Hyades were daughters of Atlas (by either Pleione or Aethra, one of the Oceanides) and sisters of Hyas in most tellings, although one version gives their parents as Hyas and Boeotia. The Hyades are sisters to the Pleiades and the Hesperides.
Nicely captured Dennis! I was out capturing the scene at the same time. Did you see the ISS passing between the planets and Orion about 20 minutes later?
Thanks Rick, Stephen, Jeanette and Rolf, as you Qldrs probably know, it was an unusually cool morning for June in Brisbane and I got into a wee spot of bother blasting the lounge room with the cooling, dawn air!
Stephen – thanks for the ISS heads up. I have found a frame taken at 5:37am with a trail in the bottom right at the same position as your image, so I’ll have a look at this later today and incorporate it into the stack. You can never have too many objects of interest in a single frame eh!
Cool widefield Dennis. You also sound like a mythology buff. Used to love l'ylliades et l'odyssée d'Homer at school when they still taught Latin and Greek. Those were compulsory in the old days. Times have changed.
Thanks Dennis,
I've been seeing this early in the morning on the way to the bus and didn't know for sure what they were (assumed the brightest was Venus but didn't know the other was Jupiter)
Cool widefield Dennis. You also sound like a mythology buff. Used to love l'ylliades et l'odyssée d'Homer at school when they still taught Latin and Greek. Those were compulsory in the old days. Times have changed.
Thanks Marc – I find the mythology quite fascinating but I’m afraid my schooling in the bleak North of England did not stretch to Greek and Latin!
Thanks Dave – I was in my work clothes, freezing cold, and got my ear bent when I came home from work in the late afternoon, for leaving the rig set up…obscuring the TV screen!
Thanks Dennis,
I've been seeing this early in the morning on the way to the bus and didn't know for sure what they were (assumed the brightest was Venus but didn't know the other was Jupiter)
Thanks Rupert – I have added an image to this post identifying some of the other objects in the field of view.
Stephen – whilst I did get an image of the ISS on the frame at 5:37am, it is unfortunately outside the FOV of this image so I can’t add it to the splendid celestial inventory. However, I did discover Minor Planet 1 Ceres in the field later on and have circled it in the 1290 pix images added to this post.
Last Sunday (1 July) I saw Venus, Jupiter and Aldebaran in broad daylight with my Dobson.
Next Sunday Venus is close to Aldebaran and can be seen in daylight in one field.
It is well worth trying !
You also sound like a mythology buff. 
