The Dutch Observatory

Today is the third day I imaged the conjunction of Venus, the Moon, Jupiter and Mercury. I made a special trip to Charlie Elliott to get the same horizon which I had in the previous images and put the three days in one picture showing how the objects moved during the three day period.  The Moon looked spectacular next to Venus with Jupiter and Mercury sitting side by side just above the horizon.  What a way to say goodbye to 2008!!
(Click the image below to see the larger picture. Jupiter and Mercury are in the bottom/right of the images)

The moon is moving up closer to Venus and Jupiter and Mercury moved close to each other as they get ready for a great conjunction of December 31.  This image was made at Charlie Elliott the evening of 12/30/2008.  The sky showed large streaks of thin clouds, which moved in front of the Moon and Jupiter and Mercury.  In this image they all seemed to come through, but Jupiter and Mercury are very low in the sky.  From top to bottom: Venus, Moon, Jupiter and Mercury.

Venus is getting ready for a nice conjunction with the Moon on December 31, while Jupiter and Mercury will have their own conjunction at that time. This image, two days before the event, shows nicely how all four of them are getting ready for this.  (From top to bottom: Venus, moon, Jupiter, Mercury)

The images below are the “Perigee Moon”, the biggest moon of the year.  The moon today is closesed to Earth in its eliptical orbit around the Earth.  It also is about 14% wider and 30% brighter today than lesser Moons of the year.  I took the images half way between my house and Hard Labor Creek Park, since the moon rise was obstructed from my home.  I am glad I drove half a mile and ended up with these images.

Calsky did forecast a very bright flare from Iridium 5 for tonight.  When talking to Jon Wood, he suggested to take the camera out, set it at 30 seconds and “let it rip”.  Well I did not set it at 30 seconds, because I wanted to control when to end the exposure, but positioned the camera well so it would pass throught the field of view.  As announced, Iridium 5 came thru and flared above my head with the left solar panel, but then came the nice flare from the right panel on the way down.  the brightness peaked at -6.3 and was brighter than Venus in the west.  Here my 55mm, 51 second image at f5.6 and ISO1600.

My house, where I took the image, was only 2100 feet from the center line of the flare. The red area along the wire, is a red tape moving in the wind. The tape is tied around the telephone wire crossing the road.

In addition, there were some thin clouds in the field of view with the moon shining right above them.

The Moon, Venus and Jupiter came in a beautiful conjunction in the evening of December 1, 2008.  Since the forecast was cloudy skies for Social Circle, I went out the night before and captured some images from the trio the night before, just in case.  However, after a cloudy sky all day long, the skies over Walton county cleared up between 4:00 and 5:00 in the afternoon and gave way to a beautiful sight.  Here, two images of the nigt of the conjunction (Venus and Jupiter are 2 degrees apart), and one from the night before.