OT - Jupiter and Saturn Conjunction

[WWSittingduck]

Think you would have to live on Mars not to have heard about this already.  

On the 21st of this month, Jupiter and Saturn will be 1/10th of a degree apart, low in the southwest about 40 mins after sunset.  For reference, a full moon is about .5 degrees.

I dread the thought of having to drag everything out again, set it up etc, but would regret it if I missed it.

[WWChunk]

Hoping for clear weather that day, but it’s not looking good on that front. This is such a cool and unique event to see. 

[WWSandMan]

My friend Meghan, another local friend and I are avid about running around the darker parts of southern Minnesota (meaning cornfield approaches and public boat landings, lol) in search of potential aurora viewing or, as in this case, viewing of special astronomical events.

Unfortunately it's calling for solid over-cast here all day Monday into Wednesday with snow possible. At least it means the long underwear get to stay in the drawer a while longer. It gets chilly out there at 1am with the camera on a tripod waiting for something to happen.

[WWGreyWolfe]

So on the west coast, where is the sighting going to be and at what time?

[WWDubya]

West coast: sundown/dusk, low on the west-south-western horizon.

[WWDarkdiz]

For those who may have a clear view of this...

This might help get that neat, once-in-a-lifetime awesome-looking pic...

night-sky-cheat-sheet-new.pdf

[WWGreyWolfe]

Thanks Guys!

[WWDarkdiz]

Here are some other ones.

For those who can see it, it will be fairly low above the Southern horizon, around 185 deg true, 15 deg elevation (from Winnipeg, 49.9 deg latitude).  The further S you go, the higher it will seem.  Another nice thing is that the milky way is DIRECTLY behind it, so if you do it right...

Weather permitting (not looking too good right now), I will be using a wide angle lens on my Pentax K3 (1.6 crop sensor, so even though it is a 18mm lens, the effective focal length is about 29mm).  Canon non-full frame is also 1.6, Nikon non-full-frame is 1.5).  A longer focal length will present some issues as less light will enter the camera lens, leading to longer exposures.  Also, you cannot open a longer focal length lens' aperture as wide as shorter lenses.  A tripod or some other method of ensuring the camera is stabilized is essential(hand held is not an option under 1/30 of a second exposure).  Post-processing will get me as close as I need in terms of framing what I want to see.

Not to preach to the choir...

3 things you need to setup are ISO, aperture, and exposure.  I'm going to start my ISO at 3200.  You can use either the 500 or 600 rule (divide the effective focal length of your lens by either 500 or 600) to give you the longest exposure possible without star trails.  So the longest I can theoretically use is around 17 secs.  If you have auto-focus, turn it off, manually focus at infinity, also turn off image stabilization if your lens has it.  Manually open up the lens aperture as wide as it will go, and set your exposure time (BULB, camera shutter remains open as long as the shutter is pressed, if your camera allows long exposures sufficient for your purpose, go with that).  If you have a shutter release cable, use it.  If you don't, you can use the self timer at 2 seconds to eliminate the inevitable shake of the camera when you manually press the shutter button.  I'll take a test shot or two, and see what the results are using Live-View (the screen on the back of the camera).

Here comes the fun part... Take a whole hockey sock full of shots, varying the ISO and exposure time.  They are inversely proportional, so if you increase the ISO to say 6400, you can decrease the exposure time.  Similarly, if you decrease the ISO to say 1600, you need to increase exposure time (watch out for star trails though!).

Remember, if the camera does not capture the elements of the image (in low light especially), no amount of post-processing will save it (post-processing cannot do anything about something that is simply not there).

Good luck, I hope to see the results here

 

PhotographingSpace-DSLR_AstrophotographySettings_V2.pdf

[WWSandMan]

That's a perfect primer for Astro-photography.

No photo attempts from me, despite only partially clouded skies. Unfortunately I was distracted with an apparently wounded dog (vet found nothing conclusive this morning, but the dog was in a lot of pain centered on his left shoulder area.) I've seen a few really nice captures with "normal" camera equipment on various Facebook groups. One of the nicest was a stacked/layered image that was tack-sharp and showed Jupiter's moons and Saturn's rings. (of course I cant find it now, thanks Fadebook.)

[WWSittingduck]

This is the best pic i've found yet.  Modest setup too.  8" Celestron edge with a ASI224MC camera.

 

[WWSandMan]

That's a cool image... Wow! 

[WWGreyWolfe]

Yea,Cool! Still waiting for someone to get a shot.

[WWSandMan]

Getting blizzard'ed upon here in south-central Minne-snowta. Not much snow (maybe 6") but 50mph winds pushing it along causing zero visibility and below-zero temps == a really crappy day/night to be outside. No chance of viewing astronomical things here.