The Sky at Night

[ffutures]

I've made about twenty attempts to take a picture of the conjunction of the Moon, Venus and Jupiter in the sky tonight. Needless to say it really can't be done properly with amateur gear; I got the Moon and Venus reasonably well, but to get Jupiter at all I had to take such a long exposure that the moon is just a bright arc with no detail. I was hand-holding the camera which didn't help. Here's the best picture, looking west from my sister's garden; I've adjusted the brightness and contrast slightly, but haven't otherwise modified it. Even so it's nowhere near as good as e.g. the one in the Evening Standard tonight, which I suspect is heavily doctored:







The moon is top left, Jupiter is bottom right (I think - it's possible I have it completely wrong!)

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I'm not seeing more than one tiny bright spot on the right. But the real thing is quite impressive, isn't it? It's definitely the Moon, Venus, and Jupiter in conjunction, and if you look east you can see Mars too, halfway across the night sky.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

You have to click on it and zoom in to the maximum to see much - It's a single dot, much fainter than Venus, near the bottom RH corner.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

I had a go with my S6500fd last night and Sunday, but I'm banjaxed if I could get the damn focus right. Four-second exposure (the best it can do) with various apertures on a mini-tripod. I managed to get all three in shot, but the range of brightness was problematic. Also got a recognizable shot of Orion and a shot of Mars.

I'll see if I can get my arse in gear to put the not-terrible ones up on flickr tonight or tomorrow.

[secondsilk.livejournal.com]

Wow.
That's pretty cool.

[keswindhover.livejournal.com]

I've been having a go too and failing to get a decent shot. I need to go somewhere with less light pollution to do better, I think.

[raygungothic.livejournal.com]

Sounds like ND grads aren't obsolete in the age of the digital camera. That's a nice shot, though. And... hand held? how on earth?

What's the focal length?