Post by Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe on May 31, 2005 16:48:05 GMT -6
Mars and Moon Conjunction 31 May 2005
Remembering that the Moon and Mars would be close together this morning, I got up quite early and ventured into my backyard to catch the event. I have a good easterly view, so I peeked over my neighbors fence...there there it was. A pretty paring of the celestial bodies, millions of miles apart, but the dance of the spheres aligning them just so.
I wanted to capture this on camera, but my scope was asleep in it's case and in my backseat. I got my binoculars and crudely taped the digital camera to the binos, using one eyepiece to align and trying to focus the image on the camera screen. This is my result....
The first shot was taken around 4:15 am
Birds were chirping and a nice cool breeze caressed me as I shot this one about 4:30 am
Playing around with the zoom on the camera while still attached to the binos, I needed to find the sweet spot between focus and FOV.
The last image was taken thru my trees sans binos and rested on my neighbors fence, and taken about 4:45 am.
It quite pleasent morning, I had wished I set up the scope for decent observation. It's quite a different moon in it's last waning days. We are all used to seeing the Moon when it's a early evening object, but the lunar features are illuminated from the opposite angle and a treat to observe.
I tried to take zoomed in shots of the duo, but without a tripod, all I was getting were blurred images no matter how still I became. So they were all zoomed out. Next time.
I remember an article in an astronomy magazine about observing the moon during the wee hours. I highly recommend it... :)