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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

A close Conjunction of Jupiter and The Moon

21 January 2013

It is brutally cold out.

9 Degress and below zero with the gusty wind chill.

Astro Joe don't do no more winter astronomy like he did when he was a kid....unless something special is going on. And we got a special meeting of celestial bodies this evening...

Jupiter, while in Taurus, gets a visitor this evening by the Moon. One can clearly see the constellation of Taurus, along with the Pleaides.

The winds were gusting, but setting up outside of the garage in the Heart of Chicago, it was much too cold to set-up the C11 main scope...so I dragged out the old 4.5" Polaris scope that I used for many years and took some peeks at the conjunction...

Back to to meeting...

You just about catch some of Jupiter's satellites in this one above.

Some artistic fun here:

This close pairing of Jupiter and the Moon won't happen again till 2026.

[scottmason]

Love it!

Here are the best two I got of the event.

This first one was around 7:30, before they had gotten the closest. I think they were still 5 degrees apart at this point.
This was with my 70-300 zoom lens at about 200mm, cropped.




A few hours later I got out the CG-5 Mount and Meade 2045d and set up in the freezing cold weather. It definitely wasn't convenient that this had to happen on what seemed to be the coldest night of the year. I was well layered and had heating pads in the boots and pockets, though.
After the initial alignment, I bumped my battery which uses clamps to connect to the Power Inverter. This tripped the power and I had to start all over again.
Finally at 10:38 PM I got this which is a composite of two shots. One for the moon and Jupiter, and another (brighter) exposure for Jupiter's moons. Perhaps Paulie or any of the Jupiter Junkies can tell me which moons we're seeing? Also, I think that red one at 4 o clock is Io, it looks like it has a shadow or crater visible??

Instead of blowing the page up with a huge resolution image, I'll link to it so you can see all the detail in the moons.

Click here:
www.flickr.com/photos/93515081@N00/8405987783/sizes/o/in/photostream/

I wish I knew why my moon shots through the scope came out a tad blurry all the time. Perhaps I need better collimation. I hadn't done any last night.



Here's the same shot but at normal resolution.


Here is a crop of Jupiter with 3 moons




After these shots were taken, I tripped the battery yet AGAIN and called it a night. I tried restarting but it was so cold, the screen on my hand controller was fading out and responding slowly. I think the battery was too cold. I was going to use the Last Alignment option on my mount, has anyone tried that?

[Centaur]

Thanks for sharing your fine photos, Joe and Scott. I’m glad you were able to observe the conjunction and alignment. Apparently we aren’t getting any reports from South America where Jupiter was occulted by the Moon.

There will be another Jupiter occultation for folks down under next month. That will be the last of a monthly series that began in June. Nevertheless, the parade of 2013 southern hemisphere occultations continues.

Here are what I've determined are the upcoming significant lunar occultations (UT dates for the mid-points).

2013 JAN 23 – Zeta Tauri – Region surrounding Indian Ocean
2013 FEB 02 – Spica – Southern Africa & Madagascar
2013 FEB 03 – Alpha Librae – Southeastern Australia & Southern New Zealand
2013 FEB 04 – Beta Scorpii – Malaysia, Indonesia & Australia

I’ve created a new webpage specifically for occultations. Currently it contains graze maps, Besselian elements, preview graphics and data for the above listed occultations.

The charts can be seen by clicking: www.CurtRenz.com/occultations

Others that will be added in the near future are:

2013 FEB 18 – Jupiter – Southern Australia
2013 FEB 20 – Zeta Tauri – South America

The next occultation of any significance for North Americans will be that of Beta Scorpii during the early evening of 2013 May 24 (UT date 25). Unfortunately that will be by the brightest Full Moon of the year, despite it entering a truly insignificant penumbral eclipse shortly after the occultation. The evening portion of the occultation will be only for observers in the eastern half of the USA (including Chicagoland), Mexico, Central America, northern South America, the Caribbean and a tiny portion of Canada. The path will then swing across the Atlantic for an early morning visit with western Africa.

North Americans will be in the zone of occultation for the minor planets 134340 Pluto and 5 Astraea on 2013 APR 30 and 2013 MAY 01. But those events would be mainly of academic interest since they will be tough to observe, especially in the case of dim Pluto.

[amryan]

The conjunction of Jupiter and the Moon on Monday inspired me to try basic astro-photography for the first time. Here is the Moon and Jupiter from my backyard in Oak Park. I used my handheld Casio camera and a 32 mm focal length eyepiece in my 8" dobsonian. The photo has been post-processed a little in photoshop to bring out the details on the moon that were hard to see in the slightly over exposed original. I'll definitely have to try this again on a night that is not so cold.

Enjoy.

Attachments:

[Centaur]

Well done, amryan. Thanks for sharing.

[scottmason]

Nice, amryan!

[amryan]

Thanks guys. Now I just have to figure out how to post an image so that it can be viewed at a regular size. So much to learn...

Tony

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Great that fellow Chicago Astronomers captured the event and shared the pics.

Amryan...

Go to www.photobucket.com and establish a free account. There, you upload your images and post the links here at the CA.

Then we can see your full sized pics.