The Conjunction Station in the Red HIlls: A Report, and a Santa Claus Sighting

The view with my handheld camera

The weather gods decided to make things difficult for us in regards to the rare celestial event that took place tonight. We finally got rain last week, and when the rain comes to the Great Valley of California, the Tule Fog follows. Earlier this week the fog cleared in the late afternoon allowing me to get a few experimental shots of the approaching conjunction, but the fog has not relented for two straight days. If we were going to see the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction (the closest approach visible in 800 years), we had to do something a little drastic. We headed up into the Sierra Nevada foothills to get above the inversion layer that traps the fog at low elevations.

The telescopic view using the smartphone

I knew of a likely spot in the Red Hills Area of Critical Environmental Concern near Chinese Camp that would have a good view. We got there a bit before sunset and set up our gear. 

Preliminary shot with the telescope and phone

I don't have fancy astronomical gear. I borrowed the old Questar telescope that we keep in the department at the college, and brought my own Panasonic Lumix point-and-shoot (but with the 60x zoom; good for my birdwatching). Lacking any attachments, I used my phone to snap shots from the telescope lens.

You've maybe noticed that it is easier to identify an oncoming car in daylight, since the headlights overwhelm the details in darker conditions. It's like that when viewing planets. The first picture above was taken as soon as I could see the planets in the darkening skies. The rings of Saturn are clearly visible (and in fact this was the first time I've ever captured a distinct view of the rings with my camera). Later in the darkness I took the picture below and the planets are too bright to see the rings well. On the other hand, three of Jupiter's moons are visible. There's always a tradeoff!

I guess we shouldn't have been surprised that a bunch of other people had the same idea of coming to this particular spot, but they were doing the right thing and masking up and keeping to their own groups. I had to wonder though if we weren't in the presence of a rather famous person...

 You'll have to be the judge, but the man's telescope is red, and presumably could pass for a giant candy cane. And he doesn't really have to work for another couple of days...

And Mercury Makes Four. Beautiful Gathering in the Morning Sky

There is still a beautiful show in the sky in the early morning this month. When I realized I missed Mercury in my Friday morning picture, I went out again this morning for another try, and caught it between the trees on the eastern horizon. It's only the fourth or fifth time that I've seen Mercury (mostly out of laziness because you have to know just where to look), and only the second time I've photographed it.

In all the excitement about Pluto and Ceres over the last few months, it might be good to remember that NASA and the European Space Agency have been on a real winning streak of late. There are the tireless surface vehicles on Mars, the Cassini exploration of Saturn, the Galileo mission to Jupiter, and the Messenger mission to Mercury that have given us an unprecedented look at our Solar System. It is simply stunning that we have in just 58 years of space travel that we have had such success in exploring our nearest neighbors in space, and that they have turned out to be places of the imagination. No one could have predicted in 1957 that the moons and planets of our Solar System could have been so strange and wonderful.

Extraordinary Grouping of Planets this week

It was one of those incredibly busy weeks, planning for our campus club events, a "Wild Planet Day" fundraiser for our Great Valley Museum, a field trip to Yosemite, and all the regular stresses of an academic week. I didn't spend much time cruising the web, and missed the posts about the relatively rare close grouping of the visible planets this week in the early morning sky. But I sure couldn't miss it on Friday morning when I was loading the car for our early morning departure on a field trip. Out came the camera, and I got three planets and the moon together in one frame. The star Regulus is visible at the top, next to bright Venus. Mars is to the left and just above the Moon, while Jupiter is at the lower left. I found out later that Mercury had just risen over the horizon, but I didn't have a view of that part of the sky.

The ancients thought that such groupings were portents of great or terrifying things, but today we understand that we are seeing the result of orbital mechanics and gravitational attraction. But that knowledge doesn't take away from the beauty. If anything, our understanding of why the planets appear this way makes it all the more beautiful.

Look West, Young Man (and Everyone Else): It's a Conjunction!

There are interesting things happening in the western skies this week. All month, there have been two bright objects in the evening sky, getting closer and closer. They aren't really getting physically closer, as Jupiter is far beyond Venus, but their line of sight is making them appear close together. Such "near-misses" are called conjunctions. They will appear closest on June 30 and July 1, so be sure to check it out!

It's been a long time since I've been able to photograph two planets in one frame at a magnification high enough to catch Jupiter's moons. Maybe tomorrow I'll even try a tripod (tonight I was just leaning on the hood of the car in the front yard).

I've been watching the dance of the planets for two weeks now. At Natural Bridges National Monument on the Summer Solstice, I caught the new moon adjacent to the planets. The Ancestral Puebloans were keen astronomers, designing their cities in the desert to align with astronomical and seasonal phenomena. Something like this in 1150 AD would most certainly have caught their attention.

It was a real privilege to be in a series of parks that are so remote from human light sources. The night skies were brilliant. The nights were nearly as interesting as the days at times. Not only is there the sky with the stars, planets, and Milky Way, but the night sounds and odors as well.

Get more information about the conjunction from EarthSky at http://earthsky.org/tonight/watch-the-great-race-of-venus-and-jupiter-in-june-2015.