planetary conjunction - day 1

I woke up this morning at 5am to a partly cloudy sky. Few stars were visible except for the brightest ones. At first it didn't seem that there was much hope of seeing the conjunction. I took my time to mount my camera and 16x70 Fujinon on tripods, just in case. From the south-facing window of my apartment, Spica, Corvus and southern hemisphere constellations winked in and out of the clouds.

Things only started to look good at about 5:30am. The clearing began while I was at my computer (or was I in the bathroom?) checking out the positions of the constellations I could barely see. I returned to the window to find the entire strip of southern Milky Way constellations shining through. Centaurus, Crux, Vela, Carina... I've missed them for months. α Centauri, then barely 7° above the horizon, didn't seem any less intense than it usually was. A brief glance at Crux in my binoculars revealed possibly more than 50 stars within the area bound by the four stars in that constellation. It also helped that key stars (α and β Librae) in Libra were visible. With the aid of a sky chart program and some star hopping, I was able to aim my binoculars at the spot where the trio were expected appear from the cloud banks. 0559h... checked with the sky chart program again. The planets have risen! 0601h... Cream yellow Mercury peeked out from the horizon hugging cloud. Mars made its entry not long after.

Enough of the preamble. Here's one of the earliest photos (click to enlarge) I took. The brightest stars are Mercury and Jupiter, with Jupiter lower in the sky. Mars is at Jupiter's one o'clock position, completing the vertices of an equilateral triangle. Look hard and you'll find β Scorpii at Jupiter's 10 o'clock position, separated from the latter by about a third the separation between Mercury and Jupiter. Look really hard and you'll might see δ Scorpii sandwiched between wisps of dark clouds, to the right of Mars, and separated from it by about twice the distance between Mercury and Mars. This was taken at 0607h LT (2207h UTC) with Nikon Coolpix 5400, 4s, f/4.4, ISO 400.

And this was at 0613h LT (2213h UTC). Camera settings: 2s, f/4.6, ISO 400.

At 0621h LT (2221h UTC). Camera settings: 1s, f/4.6, ISO 100.

(I might stitch the 30 odd photos I took into some sort of time-lapse animation if I figure out how.)

I lost Mars completely from binocular view at about 7am, minutes after sunrise. For the first time, I convinced myself that Mercury and Jupiter can be seen in broad daylight.

I hope I get lucky again tomorrow, when Mercury moves closer to Jupiter. Meanwhile, it's clear skies to all on time zones west of me...