Posts Tagged ‘Jupiter’

Woke up before sunrise this morning and noticed Jupiter high overhead while stepping outside to check the temperature. Got out the tripod, camera and 500mm lens and managed to get the following picture:

Ganymede, Callisto, Io and a Bit of Europa by an Over-exposed Jupiter

From left-to-right, the moons you can see are Ganymede, Callisto, Io and a bit of Europa adjacent to an over-exposed Jupiter.

Was stuck for taking a picture of the day until I looked outside from my back deck and saw the moon and Jupiter high in the sky. So I dug out the tripod, tried various settings and this is the one I am happiest with:

Moon and Jupiter in a Cloudy Night Sky

I wouldn’t normally take an astronomical shot on a cloudy night, but I liked the colours that appeared in the cloud just by the bright moon, which I think comes out well in this shot. The bright dot of Jupiter appears lower-left in the shot.

When I stepped out the door early this morning on my way to work, I saw the Moon and Jupiter high overhead. I immediately stepped back inside to grab my camera, fit the telephoto lens onto it as well as the tripod.

Clearly I had missed the closest conjunction point several hours earlier, but I figured this was still worth a shot.

Moon and Jupiter in the Early Morning Sky

(Hmm, Jupiter doesn’t even appear in the thumbnail image above, but it does come through as a multi-pixel circle when seen full-sized. Key thing was keeping the Moon and Jupiter in the same shot. Oh well…)

I read that there was going to be a near conjunction of the moon with Jupiter, so I dutifully set up my tripod on the back deck to shoot the following picture:

Crescent Moon and Jupiter

While it is hard to tell at thumbnail size, the “bump” that appears at 5 o’clock to Jupiter isn’t a lens echo, but one of that giant planet’s many moons. Am pleased with how this pic came out.

I read that the Moon was going to be close to Jupiter this evening, so I set up my tripod, got out the telephoto lens and took a number of shots of which this is the final result.

This is not one shot, but an mix of the best of the shots I took of the Moon and of Jupiter. Jupiter is actually slightly larger to scale (though not by much) so that you can see the relative positions of the moons. And the pic has also been tweaked so that the pixels representing Jupiter and its moons are clear — basically I “knocked out” the representative pixels that appeared, making them completely white. It’s not cheating, it just enhanced! 😉

Still, the resulting shot is effective:

Moon + Jupiter and its Moons (Ganymede, Io, Calisto, Europa)

Woke up very early this morning, and while making my usual morning tea I looked out the porch door at the back and saw a very bright “star” in the low east. I figured it must be a planet, likely Venus. I confirmed this when I went to check Stellarium on my computer. So I dug out my camera tripod and the telephoto lens and thought I’d try to see if I could catch the planet in one of its phases. The picture below was the best of the bunch I shot.

The planet Venus

Stellarium also pointed out that Jupiter and the moon were prominent in the western sky, so I set up my tripod on the front porch and took some more pictures. The pic below shows Jupiter either flanked by some of its moons, or is a form of lens aberration.

Jupiter and Moons(?)

I’ll have to try and take another set of pics of Jupiter to see whether or not I get the same effect.

I don’t have much to show really, and I can’t help but think that the next stage up in telephoto lenses would be desirable for taking better, more detailed astrophotography pics. Still much to learn!