Dancing Planetary Bodies

Over the past couple of weeks, Jupiter and Venus have been dancing a predawn duet. They moved into their closest positions on the morning of August 18th, at that point less than 1/2° apart - less than the apparent width of the Moon. This morning, the Moon got into the dance as the conjunction draws to a close.

Despite an unfavorable weather forecast, I decided to chance it anyway and see if maybe I would at least get a peek at the conjunction through a break in the clouds. At 4:00 am, there was only a break that gave view to Orion's belt and dagger, with about an hour to go, I decided to try my hand at imaging Orion. I captured more than a dozen, 1 second exposures to "stack" back at the beach house. I'm reasonably satisfied with the results as one of my first attempts at trying this technique.

Orion's Daggar
Photoshop stack of 15 one-second exposures from Canon 60D, f/5.6 400mm.

This was a camera and binoculars morning as the winds were too strong and would just shake the telescope around. As it was, even the binoculars were disturbed by the wind when they were mounted on the tripod.

Wind, chill, and clouds were tempting me to go back inside when I noticed a sliver of light behind a thin cloud. As that cloud passed, it revealed the Crescent Moon. A couple minutes later I found Venus and then finally Jupiter completed the trio. With the clouds shifted and allowing a view of the conjunction, they actually added to the drama.

As the sun rose, the planets faded from view and a new bank of clouds moved in front of the Moon. But what a dramatic curtain for this week's conjunction!