Parade of Planets (part three)

For those of you who have been watching the sky with me during the last two posts, we have arrived at part three.  

For those of you who just happened to visit my blog, we are watching the parade of Saturn, Mars, Venus and Jupiter.  The Moon joins in every now and then.  And one morning, we had a satellite briefly fly through.  I suggest that you go back and look at the first two parts of this adventure if you haven't seen them yet and then return to this one. (just scroll down to find them)  

I would also suggest that all of you view this post when the lighting is low. Because the planets are spread out, they are small and dim in some of these pictures, and bright lights in your computer room may make it harder to see them.  

This is where we left off during part two.  Venus is in the center and is the brightest. Saturn is at the top and Mars below it. The apparent distance between them is growing. Jupiter is way down by the palm fronds and will be moving up each day. The conjunction, of Venus and Jupiter will happen on May 1st. It may be on May 2nd here.  

Keep watching at how the distance between Venus and Jupiter diminishes.   

5:50 a.m., April 24, 2022  "♪ Oh what a night! ♪"  

I was lucky this morning.  The clouds are moving in fast, but what a line up!  The moon is leading the parade today, followed by Saturn, Mars, Venus and Jupiter. I call that spectacular. 

 

April 26, 2022

The moon has changed its position but the planets are still lined up. Jupiter is getting much closer to Venus.  

April 29, 2022  No moon today, sorry.  Look at Jupiter go!  It's like a horse that got out of the gate late, but is coming up fast on the rest of the field. 

April 30, 2022   A big surprise today for me. (Maybe for you too.)  

Here is the wide-angle view. (Disregard the fairly bright star off to the right of Saturn) 

In this picture I zoomed in part way on just Venus and Jupiter and when I uploaded the photo, I discovered that I could see the Galilean Moons of Jupiter as well.  (No, that's not a moon of Venus, just a star that happened to show up in the photo...Venus has no moons.)

Well, I've got to get closer yet, don't I?  Here it is.  WOW!

And here is a view I took just before daylight washed out the planets altogether.  

May 1, 2022  Look at that! It's almost conjunction time! Look how close Venus and Jupiter are.  The humidity this morning is making them look fuzzy and blending them together. 

This is a closer look....

And this is as close as I can get. This absolutely floors me.  I never imagined that I would ever see Venus and Jupiter with three of its moons in a single picture.  

Scroll back up to the blue sky picture and see how much closer Jupiter is to Venus in this picture than it was just yesterday morning.  

Based on how much Jupiter has moved up in the last 24 hours, I think that by tomorrow, if the clouds allow me to see it, I'll find that it has moved well past the point of conjunction and will be above Venus. 

Success!  I Was able to see the planets this morning and I was right, Jupiter is quite a ways past Venus.  I'm very pleased that I could witness this.  

Here it is at about 5 a.m. on (my) May 2, 2022.  (from our balcony) 

If you compare it to the picture from the balcony above, (with the palm fronds showing) you'll see how much Jupiter moved in the last 24 hours.  

Here is the close up of just Venus and Jupiter.  Wow.  Impressive, huh? 

Looking back at how close J was to V yesterday, I think the actual conjunction moment took place just hours possibly after the pictures I took yesterday morning.  The conjunction probably took place in the bright sky above me, maybe around noon.  

Well, I saw it as close to conjunction as it was possible for me to see.  

This is a shot of a very fuzzy Jupiter et al. I love that we can see two moons passing one another.  This may be my favorite picture of the series.  It shows of a 'conjunction' of moons, happening during the conjunction of planets. 

I have been so incredibly lucky with my photos.     

I find it interesting too that my camera can be thought of as a humidity gauge.  The clearer the shot, the lower the humidity. And the reverse is true of course.  I looked up this morning and found that the humidity was 88%.  No wonder Jupiter is fuzzy.  

So, that's it.  The main part of the parade is over. If we wanted to, we could continue to watch the line of planets move on, with Venus still very bright, but now bringing up the rear.  But I think I've had enough for now.  

Early in June, Mercury will briefly join the other planets in the early morning, but it will be really hard to see it.  You can be sure though that I'll be trying.  

As a bonus feature, here are two more pictures of Jupiter and its moons close up. I took both of these pictures on May 2, 2022. 

What I want you to notice are the two moons that are passing one another, above the planet.  This was the first zoom picture I took.     

This picture was taken a few minutes after the first one. I think you'll agree that the right hand moon is closer to being even with the left hand moon in this shot than it is in the previous photo.  We are seeing them move past each other.  I wish I had taken more shots and could continue the progression for you.  

One final thought.  Check out the text and picture I have below. 

What a difference, then and now. 

This is a picture I took on December 25, 2020, at about 9:30 p.m. This is Jupiter and Saturn during their conjunction.  I was excited to see this of course, but what a difference a new camera makes.  

The conditions were cloudy and it was not yet full dark, so that affected the quality of this shot, but the sizes of the planets were as good as I could produce at the time with my little Canon.           -djf