Venus & Jupiter

The planets Jupiter and Venus in alignment last night. It was a
gorgeous evening to go out and get some shots of this celestial
encounter. This event happens every 13 months. Last night, the
two planets were separated by just 3 degrees. Venus is the brighter
of the two planets even though it's much smaller in size.


When two planets line up in the sky, astronomers call it "planetary
conjunction." March 24th, 25th and 26th, a crescent moon will join
the global meeting between Jupiter and Venus being visible with the
two planets.


I took this shot of Jupiter and Venus looking through the top of our
garden arbor. Beautiful! If you get the chance and the sky is clear
tonight, go out and check this out.

Astrophotography

This is one of my first attempts at astrophotography. Terry sent
me a link to a webpage about this type of photography because
he thought it might be something I would be interested in, and
he was right. I was surprised at how easy this is to do. The
following are the camera settings I used to capture these stars
in the night sky on December 2nd.

Camera settings

• Program Mode - Set to Manual.

• Autofocus - Turn off, or set to Manual.

• White Balance - Set to Daylight or use a
• custom white balance (especially if your
  
• camera is modified).

• Drive - Set to One Shot.

• ISO - This is discussed in detail in a following section,
  
• but generally should be set to 1600 or 800 for long
  
• exposure deep-sky astrophotos.

• Metering - Generally doesn't matter, but you can try
  
• setting it to Spot if you are shooting the Moon or Sun
  
• (with proper filtration)

• Exposure Compensation - Set to Zero, no exposure
  
• compensation. Doesn't really matter because you are
  
• not using autoexposure.

• Shutter Speed - Set to the exposure you want, up to
  
• 30 seconds can usually be dialed in directly. For longer
  
• than 30 seconds, set to Bulb. On some cameras, Bulb
  
• may be a separate exposure mode setting, or it may be
  
• accessed on the shutter speed dial past the 30 second
  
• setting.

• Self Timer - If you don't have a remote release, you
  
• can use the camera's self-timer to trip the shutter so
  
• you don't have to touch the camera, which will help
  
• reduce vibrations and possible star trailing.