Jupiter Moon conjunction

It's one of those days where I have a huge list of things to do but somehow nothing can be done in parallel and there's a lot of waiting around, never with quite enough time to get on with something else useful. I write this as I'm waiting for two programs to finish running and give me results for a paper I'm finally writing up having met up with a collaborator in Greece last week - of which more, perhaps, soon.

Anyway, after dinner with some friends last night I got home and saw the moon in near conjunction with Jupiter. I took a few shots and put two of them together to make the following, where Ganymede, Io and Calista were easily seen with the 300mm lens.

Earthshine at Earth hour

Yesterday night at 8.30 I switched my lights off and went to look out of the window from my great vantage point up on the seventh floor, overlooking some lovely scenery. Having had a pretty overcast day I wasn't expecting much, but the clouds had cleared and the moon was looking particularly stunning, with a lovely Earthshine lighting up the otherwise dark majority of its face.

Just down to the bottom right is Iota Arietis, a magnitude 5.09 binary star. On a dark night from my apartment I can pick up magnitude +11 objects, but in the twilight +5 seems to be the limit. Note that this is all without a telescope. Simply an amateur DSLR camera, a zoom lens (70-300mm), a tripod and a cable release. I continue to be amazed at what you can see with simple equipment.

The picture is untouched from the original apart from an unsharp mask, a crop and the brightening of the star in the bottom right.

Venus and the crescent moon over Santiago

Keep an eye out, the two will get even closer for the next couple of days.

See also the very nice shot from Twomanytribbles, complete with Earthshine and twighlight sky.

Full moon over Santiago (largest full moon of 2009)

I set my alarm this morning for 5.30am, because only at this time can I view the moon at perigee from the comfort of my living room, with the tripod set up, and without freezing to death while setting up the shot (the window stays open for only a little longer than the 1/800th of a second it took to get this shot). Of course you get less contrast in a full moon than a crescent moon, but it's still a lot of fun to play around with the new zoom. I still yearn for liveview!

Click for larger.

The Moon over Oxford

I still have a long way to go with getting a feel for the new lens, but the moon was looking too good to miss last night. A slight mist meant that the focus isn't perfect, but it's come out quite well (thanks to Toomanytribbles for the idea to turn off image stabilisation when using a tripod). I applied a little tone mapping to bring out the areas which were very bright so that there was a little more texture and I'll be keeping an eye out for the full moon in a few days. I'll keep you posted.

I had a look last night but was rather too early to see the quadrantid meteor shower. Did anyone else see them early this morning?

Notice by the way that Neptune is close to Venus at the moment and at magnitude 7.9 it's spottable with a pair of binoculars or a camera. I'll see if I can get a shot of it in the next few days. Mercury should also be visible with the naked eye just after sunset.

Lunacy and more

For those of you foolhardy enough not to have Universe Today bookmarked in your feedreader, then you may not know that today the moon is at its closest approach to the Earth this year. It will be 14% larger and some 30% brighter (for those who are not, like I am, in overcast venues) than the moon at its further point this year. This is good for moon watching, but not so great for the Geminid meteor shower which will be somewhat obscured by the extraterrestrial light pollution.

As for me, I'm feeling pretty tired after a busy but successful few days, other than spending 20 minutes trapped in a lift on Wednesday morning. Trust me to be in the lift when there's a powercut. The emergency light was sadly neither bright enough to let me read, nor to take a photo of myself in my encarceration.

I'm currently writing up a review for a conference proceedings which I'd like to get out of the way before 't Hooft turns up next week to give a couple of talks (both departamental and public) and before I go off to Madrid to the Christmas meeting where I will be giving a talk. I'll simply link to my paper from this week with no more commentary for now than the fact that this was an extremely enjoyable paper and one of the best collaborations I've been in, given that all of us bought very different skills to the table. We already have several more ideas on the go and hope to get more done soon.

Photos of the Moon, Venus, Jupiter conjunction

Update: New photos below

We're not normally so lucky with weather here in Galicia, however, tonight we had a small window without rain or clouds for twenty minutes or so which just happened to coincide with the time of the wonderful conjunction of the crescent Moon with Venus passing behind it and Jupiter up to the top right.

I went outside to take a look and could see the crescent moon, but no more. I stood watching it for a few moments, before I noticed a tiny point of light at the bottom right of the moon - Venus was beginning to poke its head from behind the sliver of the crescent moon. Sadly I had no tripod with me and so I had to balance the exposure with the ISO very carefully so as not to blur the photos or fill them with noise. I got a few which are no great works of art, but they are satisfying reminders of this rather wonderful astronomical spectacle.

This first image was the first one I took, just as Venus started to show itself. The sky was still quite bright at this point and so Jupiter, to the top right is harder to see in this image, the sky was also filled with a mist, which stopped perfect visibility at this point.

But Jupiter became brighter as the sky grew darker:

and as the sky darkened fully, the clouds drew in and we were left with a slight corona around the moon:

I hope some of you got to see it for real too.

Update:

After processing these photos and giving up hope of seeing any more, I looked out the window to see how much it was raining, only to see this:

Will be looking out for more.

Update, overflow and conjunction

Things are just a little too busy at the moment (hence taking five minutes out to write this!). The atmospheric optics talk is taking a little longer to get right than I'd hoped, having not given a pop-science/photography/flashy images talk for many years. On top of this I'm writing up a conference proceedings, tidying up two papers and working on two other projects simultaneously. I also have to think seriously about a talk I'll be giving before Christmas at a meeting in Madrid. Spanish lessons are on hold this week and I'm not even managing to get to my Spanish exchange. I do however have a temporary housemate who is in between flats with whom I can practice Chinese and Spanish and is currently cooking up a feast while I plug away at mathematica.

And before I forget, at the beginning of December, look out in the early night sky for a fantastic conjunction between Jupiter, Venus and the crescent moon

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Moon snaps

As promised to a Beijing friend, even though I see you got your own, rather better version :-)

Taken just outside Wudaokou station. My 17-85 mm lens isn't really up to the job of astrophotography, but for now this will have to do.