At 15.48UT Venus was occulted by the moon low in the south. I missed the start of the occultation while I was at work, but the weather was cloudy at the time so it was not visible. I left work 16.45, looked up and was amazed to see the thin crescent moon and Jupiter clearly on display with Venus hidden by the moons disk. I raced home to try and catch Venus appearing on the western side of the moon at 17.17UT. I was very lucky to catch Venus appearing again right on the edge of the moon, a beautiful sight! The trio of Jupiter, Venus and the Moon were all very close in conjunction and made a superb image. You can see two of Jupiter’s moons top right either side of Jupiter. Canon 350D, Tamron 70-300 zoom, Canon 18-55 zoom. ISO 200, 4 secs.
This was a trial run in advance of the highly anticipated conjunction of the moon, Venus and Jupiter in the early evening sky on Monday 1st December at around 5pm. I wanted to try and capture the planets reflected in the canal water and just about managed it before the canal was plunged into darkness. Jupiter at top and Venus below. Canon 350D, ISO 400, 8 seconds.
Took a day off work today to see if I could catch the partial eclipse on camera. It looked very doubtful at first with lots of cloud and the potential for rain, but to my amazement at 9.30 the clouds started to clear and I got a complete sequence of the partial eclipse from 9.42 BST through to 11.04 BST using afocal photography via the PST. You can see a video of the sequence here
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v94/markwalters/Astronomy/PartialEclipse1-8-08.gif Below are images showing the start, middle and end of the sequence plus the full disk and main proms for the day taken in the afternoon.
9.42 BST
Maximum for our latitude at 10.15 BST
Near end of sequence 11.04 BST
The Moon passed close to the Pleiades star cluster tonight in a conjunction. I caught it quite late due to cloud and just had time for a quick 2 second photo with the Canon S3 IS at ISO 80. Even at 2 seconds the stars are trailing!
Taken on the Canon S3 IS at 400mm 5 secs ISO 80
It was a new moon yesterday and the crescent was super-thin. I managed to get a photo of the crescent tonight at 7.30pm and it looks quite atmospheric hovering above the rain clouds in the west with a slight “earthshine” effect.
