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!
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
|
| Bad Astronomy is a Wikio Top Blog! Clearly, Wikio has excellent taste. | |
 | ||
 | Bad Astronomy was chosen as one of Time.com's Best Blogs of 2009. |
 |
"Reading this book is like getting punched in the face by Carl Sagan. Frightening, but oddly exhilarating."
-- Daniel H. Wilson, author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising
DISCOVERmagazine.com: Latest Articles on Space DISCOVER Blogs: The Loom
August 29th, 2005 at 9:33 pm
Phil,
nice pictures. What camera/exposure/ISO did you use?
Regards
Krill
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!
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?
August 30th, 2005 at 3:51 am
Wow isn’t this dangerous? Which catastrophies will strike the earth? Where are the doomsayer websites?
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.
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
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…
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.
September 4th, 2005 at 9:07 am
the church should inform the people about cosomology