The first days of each month, I check
in “tonight sky” to look for some targets. February’s chapter announced a
conjunction of two planets and the moon so I wrote a reminder on the Calendar
for the 19th and the 20th. I don’t usually sketch the conjunctions, but take pictures
of them instead. I also wanted to get a good capture of the scene and picture
seemed, to me, to be the best way to do it.
I have a few pictures from
previous conjunctions, but this one is first I published from our new camera, a
Canon T5. I’m not an expert on astrophotography, but I have been doing some
shot sessions to understand the manual settings to get good pictures and of
course, this conjunction was a good opportunity to try. I set up the camera focused on the infinite
and with 2 seconds of exposure and aperture F/10 I got a nice picture of the
scene.
Because Mars was in contrast with
Venus, I felt that the Martian red color seemed more intense than usual. According
to Stellarium, Venus was shining at magnitude -3.84 while Mars was shining at
magnitude 1.26. At about 20:00 hours, the planets were separated by about 46
arc minutes from each other. Because the
camera has a short lens, I could not get a closer view of the moon, but it seemed
very big, the product of an optical illusion and it was just in the perfect
position to decorate the sky with a big smile.
These kind of astronomical
events are easy to enjoy with just the eyes, but because sometimes we don’t
know what we are seeing, we don’t put
our attention to them. Five of our solar system planets are easy to see
without optical instruments and conjunctions are kind of common events. To enjoy these events the only requirements
are a clear sky and the mood to go and see. At the end of this entry, I will leeave the
link of Tonight sky to check every month.
I wish all of you, clear
skies!
LG
Edited by Jennifer Steinberg (editor in chief)
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