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Bad Astronomy
« The King and Queen of the Planets
They Didn’t Planet That Way »

Venus and Jupiter, part deux

As promised in yesterday’s BA blog entry, here is another shot of Venus and Jupiter tonight.

Unfortunately, the pictures are slightly different exposures (click on the images to get bigger versions). I cropped the images to get them framed roughly the same. I also took some care to get Jupiter in roughly the same spot as it was last night, and you can see that Venus has moved up and to the left in the past 24 hours! They’re preparing for the main event Thursday night. Stay tuned!

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August 29th, 2005 9:06 PM by Phil Plait in Cool stuff | 13 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >

13 Responses to “Venus and Jupiter, part deux”

  1. 1.   Bored Huge Krill Says:
    August 29th, 2005 at 9:33 pm

    Phil,
    nice pictures. What camera/exposure/ISO did you use?

    Regards
    Krill

  2. 2.   Beche-la-mer Says:
    August 29th, 2005 at 11:02 pm

    Well, I have my tripod at the ready and am hoping for a fine night on Thursday so I can get a similar picture — only in mine Venus will be on the left!

  3. 3.   Paul Says:
    August 30th, 2005 at 12:17 am

    Hi Phil,

    How often does this happen… someone asked me when I was pointing it out last night if this was one of those “not again in our lifetime” things. I said I didn’t think so… but it was just a guess on my par. How rare is this conjunction… and do we ever get an occultation of Jupiter by Venus?

  4. 4.   wise scripter Says:
    August 30th, 2005 at 3:51 am

    Wow isn’t this dangerous? Which catastrophies will strike the earth? Where are the doomsayer websites? :-)

  5. 5.   Beche-la-mer Says:
    August 30th, 2005 at 4:26 am

    I’ve posted a southern hemisphere image on my blog. It’s not as pretty as Phil’s, but it’s an interesting comparison of the position of the planets.

  6. 6.   Bored Huge Krill Says:
    August 30th, 2005 at 10:17 am

    Paul,
    they happen quite regularly, but it depends on how many planets are involved simultaneously. There’s a pretty good list here:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_conjunction

    Regards
    Krill

  7. 7.   The Bad Astronomer Says:
    August 30th, 2005 at 10:47 am

    Venus and Jupiter pass near each other every year or so, when Jupiter gets near the Sun. This is a pretty close one though.

    Beche-la-mer, nice! I think I cropped Spica out of my image, but it’s easily seen in the original. It’s off to the left from my view, parallel to Jupiter, so I guess you’re lying on your side relative to me. :-)

  8. 8.   Michelle Rochon Says:
    August 30th, 2005 at 2:20 pm

    I knew it. I find a spot to watch this, and the hurricane’s remains are predicted to fall on our head thursday. Just my luck.

  9. 9.   Beche-la-mer Says:
    August 30th, 2005 at 5:40 pm

    http://www.flourish.org/upsidedownmap/

    I’m standing on my feet here. It’s Californians who are tipped over sideways. Just wait until the earth’s magnetic field reverses again and we’ll see who’s on top! ;-)

  10. 10.   The Bad Astronomer Says:
    August 30th, 2005 at 6:56 pm

    Bored Huge Krill, I’m not sure what the settings were. I am using a digital camera, on manual mode. I am more concerned about getting a large number of images than in writing down the settings, and I change them constantly to bracket the exposure/aperture. The exposures are about 1 second, maybe 2. The aperture is generally around f/5.

  11. 11.   Mickal555 Says:
    August 30th, 2005 at 8:11 pm

    For mine I use 400ISO film
    at f/11- 125, 250 and 500.

    I have a book which reakons that the exposers should be at 250 for 11 with ISO100 film for jupiter….

    I hope they turn out as they are alot different from the BA’s…

  12. 12.   Stanley Winford Says:
    August 31st, 2005 at 2:47 pm

    > I knew it. I find a spot to watch this, and the hurricane’s remains are predicted > to fall on our head thursday. Just my luck.

    It’s actually not that bad. Fourteen hours ago I got rain from Katrina, and now the sun is shining through my windows. It’s OK unless your city is directly below the remnants of the hurricane at night time. You can probably watch the conjunction on Friday.

    Of course, the tropical depression has combined with another storm. So I don’t know.

  13. 13.   Ameal Says:
    September 4th, 2005 at 9:07 am

    the church should inform the people about cosomology

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