August 14, 2024 - Conjunction of Jupiter and Mars with a bonus sungaze!
| A
conjunction (close encounter) of Jupiter and Mars occurred in
the early morning of August 14 locally. They made for a unique
pairing in the sky; I happened to be up early Monday morning
(August 12), coming home from an attempt at viewing the Perseid
meteor shower at a dark sky site with a couple of friends, and I
noticed a couple of bright “stars” low in the early morning
(about 2:30am) sky. And realized that it was the two planets
already in a pleasing pairing in the sky! The two planet’s closest approach was around 10:50AM Eastern Daylight Time on August 14, which would have been daylight. I wanted to start observing and imaging the pair as soon as feasible, which from our backyard (with interfering trees) was not until around 5:30AM (0930UTC). Advance planning determined that the pair would not be visible from our observatory until sometime after 6AM due to intervening trees. Given that, I set up portable equipment in our backyard (outside our observatory) the night before. |
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Click on the thumbnail for a full size image |
I ended up waking up at 4AM that morning and saw that trees still interfered with telescopic views of the pair, even with the portable setup where it was. My first image occurred at 5:50AM (0950 UTC). I hoped to image the pair for as long as they would be visible through our telescope/camera combination. Jupiter's Galilean moons have been labeled with the exception of Io. Which (if you zoom in/go full size on the image) you'll see is visible as a little dot to the lower left of Jupiter's disk. |
| Sure enough, even
in the glare of the morning sun I was able to view and image the
planets. I did not make it to the closest approach of the two,
as I lost the planets in the glare of the Sun after my last shot
around 9:18AM after a necessary maneuver by the telescope (a
meridian flip). |
Click on the thumbnail for a full size image |
|
Click on the thumbnail for a full size image |
I imaged the pair at semi-regular intervals in the hope of doing an animation showing the motion of the two planets with respect to each other. For now, here is a first pass at such an animation, with a blink showing the relative position of Mars vs. Jupiter (to keep things simple, I set Jupiter as the “fixed point” of this animation. These were taken at 5:50AM Eastern (0950UTC) and 9:18AM Eastern (1318UTC). I also labeled the visible moons of Jupiter in the 950UTC image (note that the fourth moon, IO, was just “touching” the disk of Jupiter at the time that image was taken). Those moons also moved during the elapsed time, but in the glare of the morning sky they were no longer visible. This image as well as the prior images were taken with an Astro-Phyiscs AP130EDFGT refractor on an Astro-Physics AP900GTO mount. The camera used was a ZWO ASI678MC at prime focus. |
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With planetary imaging done, I figured since we were already out that it would be a great time to check out the Sun. I installed a Lunt 2" Herschel Wedge on the 130EDFGT and gave it a peek. I was not disappointed. I switched to an ASI290MM camera and captured a 6-frame mosaic of the Sun. |
Click on the thumbnail for a full size image |
Click on the thumbnail for a full size image |
Same shot as above in color. |
| I then added a Barlow and captured some closeups of the sunspots of interest. Here is AR3784. |
Click on the thumbnail for a full size image |
Click on the thumbnail for a full size image |
And here are AR3782 and AR3780. |
| With all the backyard work done, I tore that equipment down and moved on to our observatory, where a double-stacked Lunt 80 H-alpha scope patiently waited. I captured a few more images before calling it a day for daytime astronomy. Here is a 2-panel mosaic of the Sun with the ASI290MM. |
Click on the thumbnail for a full size image |
Click on the thumbnail for a full size image |
Same 2-panel mosaic colorized. |
| I added a Barlow and took some close-ups of areas of interest. Here is AR3784. |
Click on the thumbnail for a full size image |
Click on the thumbnail for a full size image |
A group of sunspots: AR3784, AR3780, AR3783 and AR3777. |
| Interesting prominences on the southeast limb of the Sun (rotated for presentation). |
Click on the thumbnail for a full size image |
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Click on the thumbnail for a full size image |
And an animation of AR3784 covering about a 1/2 hour (30 exposures captured over 30 minutes, spaced one minute apart). Note that this is 36MB in size! |