I missed the "great conjunction" of Saturn and Jupiter on December 21, as we had cloud cover.
So I tried again last night. We had clear skies but the two planets had already begun to drift apart.
To my astonishment, through the telephoto lens on my camera, I could see four of Jupiter's moons. I could not get the camera to photograph them, but I could see them. I wondered what it was like to be the first person to ever look through a zoom lens and see that a star was actually a planet, and that it had moons. Can you imagine how amazing that must have been? And how scary? It didn't scare me because I knew it was Jupiter and that it had moons - but that first view. Wow.
Anyway, I made a stab at photos and they came out poorly. I will share nevertheless.
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| While we waited for twilight to pass, I caught this image of an airplane and the moon. |
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| This image was the best of the bunch. The planets are oblong a bit, but those two little dogs around the bigger white dot are two of Jupiter's moons. The smaller planet is Saturn. As you can see, they had moved apart. |
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| This is how they looked, more or less, to the naked eye. |
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| This has a little more definition of Jupiter as a planet. I never saw Saturn's rings, but I was happy enough with Jupiter's moons. |
I took these with a Nikon Coolpix B700. This camera came out in 2016 and that is the year I received it for Christmas. It is four years old and I am having problems with it. Last night it became stuck in open position and nothing worked, so I had to go inside and remove the battery to reset it. I would like to learn more about using this camera but since I am sensing I may need another in the near future, I probably won't. I still turn to my Nikon P500 Coolpix, which is at least 10 years old, as my go-to camera, or my Canon Sure Shot, which is even older, for everyday photos. They just don't do the job with night photos (or birds) that this one does. (I did not ask for a new camera for Christmas; things are just too wonky right now. But maybe my birthday in June?)
I could not take any good pictures either. We saw it pretty well with binoculars. While looking I saw a shooting star coming down towards the planets. It got bright and then poof it was gone. I will never forget it. It it the closest one I have seen!
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