Jupiter and Saturn Will Form a Rare Double Planet

[LisaJohn]

I tried to take a pic

[Datawiz]

I watched it 1st hand, and have extremely good eyesight. Was dimmer than I expected, and it wasn't a complete convergence. From the time I watched it, Saturn was at about 2:30 to Jupiter, and nearly 3:00 when I stopped. I had to point it out to 3 different neighbors. 2 of them could only see 1 dot like your camera. Their vision wasn't good enough to see both distinct planets. I could see them both plain as day, and there was still a very small gap between the two.

[LisaJohn]

Yes, I watched it for a while too. I could see the small gap between them. No neighbors. Unless you count the deer. Fletch was with me.

[BOTY]

Pretty easy to spot from here, an intriguing view.

[Wathen1955]

I'm fogged in so no viewing for me.

[dvarapala]

Meh, Mars was more impressive.

[TripleBlack]

Originally Posted by dvarapala

Meh, Mars was more impressive.

It was awesome for months.

[TripleBlack]

I've got a nice scope that's great for larger nebulae and galaxies but sucks for planets. I gave up using it and set up a DSLR with a 200mm f/2.8 lens. I have a light weight tracker mount but couldn't get it to track so ended up shooting some very short exposures. This is a drastic crop but at least the moons of Jupiter show. Saturn is just a football. Shooting toward the city of Ft. Worth with its light pollution didn't help.


Sucks but here it is...

[dvarapala]

Originally Posted by TripleBlack

Sucks but here it is...
Attachment 50353

Still one of the better ones that have been posted to these fora.

[LisaJohn]

Originally Posted by TripleBlack

I've got a nice scope that's great for larger nebulae and galaxies but sucks for planets. I gave up using it and set up a DSLR with a 200mm f/2.8 lens. I have a light weight tracker mount but couldn't get it to track so ended up shooting some very short exposures. This is a drastic crop but at least the moons of Jupiter show. Saturn is just a football. Shooting toward the city of Ft. Worth with its light pollution didn't help.


Sucks but here it is...
Attachment 50353

Looks awesome to me.

[Rodnok1]

Originally Posted by TripleBlack

I've got a nice scope that's great for larger nebulae and galaxies but sucks for planets. I gave up using it and set up a DSLR with a 200mm f/2.8 lens. I have a light weight tracker mount but couldn't get it to track so ended up shooting some very short exposures. This is a drastic crop but at least the moons of Jupiter show. Saturn is just a football. Shooting toward the city of Ft. Worth with its light pollution didn't help.


Sucks but here it is...
Attachment 50353

Great shot man.
Was only visible for about half hr here and I broke a tele mount so after some quick repairs about 15 minutes of viewing. Through binoculars wasn't bad to look at either.

[Mick]

This was the best from last night. Still having focus problems. My wife thinks it's the "f" factor is too high, and we haven't figured out how to change it yet.

[TripleBlack]

Planetary photography has to be the most difficult astrophotography discipline. The best shots of the conjunction with detail and color are captured with a pretty powerful scope and a specialized camera that takes thousands of frames of video which are processed with software that throws out maybe a third of the frames and then stacks the 'good' frames. It's very dependent on atmospheric conditions like the turbulence that causes the stars to twinkle and of course light pollution.



Planetary photography is to astrophotography what the birds in flight work Thomas posts is to wildlife photography.

[snide]

Originally Posted by TripleBlack

Planetary photography has to be the most difficult astrophotography discipline. The best shots of the conjunction with detail and color are captured with a pretty powerful scope and a specialized camera that takes thousands of frames of video which are processed with software that throws out maybe a third of the frames and then stacks the 'good' frames. It's very dependent on atmospheric conditions like the turbulence that causes the stars to twinkle and of course light pollution.



Planetary photography is to astrophotography what the birds in flight work Thomas posts is to wildlife photography.

Yes, but Thomas has a decent camera...

[04 commemorative]

Tonight with cell phone,not great but at least we saw them

[Datawiz]

It's still neat to watch the divergence over the next several days. I've been watching the convergence for at least a month.

[Mick]

Slowly getting better, but still not where I want it. The other night, trying to figure out the focus problem, I set the 'scope to be what I knew to be a little overfocused, and took a pic. Then, I backed off the focus a little, and snapped again. I did the same thing 5 more times, and what I got were 7 identical looking pictures. Conclusion: the camera's "autofocus" function was ****ing with me.

So, during the recent storm, I learned how to "focus lock" the camera, and tried the same thing tonight. The problem: The focus lock turns off after each exposure, and re-locking it (where I had to hold the shutter button half way down while pressing another button), while easy on the kitchen table, was VERY challenging when the camera was mounted on the scope. Add to that the fact that the planets are now far enough apart, I can't get both in the view with the camera's 4x optical zoom any more, and the attached may be the best I achieve:

[Earthquake Driver]

Originally Posted by TripleBlack

I've got a nice scope that's great for larger nebulae and galaxies but sucks for planets. I gave up using it and set up a DSLR with a 200mm f/2.8 lens. I have a light weight tracker mount but couldn't get it to track so ended up shooting some very short exposures. This is a drastic crop but at least the moons of Jupiter show. Saturn is just a football. Shooting toward the city of Ft. Worth with its light pollution didn't help.


Sucks but here it is...
Attachment 50353

Filter - Hey Man, Nice Shot (Official Music Video) - YouTube

[04 commemorative]

Daughters friend took this with a cam and telescope

[snide]

Originally Posted by 04 commemorative

Daughters friend took this with a cam and telescope

Best shot I've seen yet.