We searched out via google maps for a location with a good horizon to the southwest. Tonight was going to be the first clear evening in days.. weeks almost!
We stayed outside in the -4C to -6C for about an hour waiting for it to get dark enough. The sun set was at 16:45 and we were on Bethel Road, very close to Rose-Maries brother? The view was almost perfectly to the horizon.. almost.
Kim was using a telescope and binocs, I was using two DSLRs, one with a 300mm telephoto zoom lens and the other a 500mm f8 lens.
The 500f8 did not work out at all.. much too dark/slow for that and the old canon 300D camera.
The telephoto zoom however worked quite well. Jupiter was near mag -2, Mercury near -1 and Saturn near +1 with Jupiter highest at 5 deg 44min, then Saturn at 4 deg then Mercury at 1 deg 44 minutes above the horizon.. very very low.
This is the best image to come out of that observing session, taken at 17:23 EST, the best combination of sky darkening and Mercury still being high enough not to go all atmospheric extinction on its
I used MS Paint to annotate the name, magnitude and altitude onto the image.. hmm. Once set you cannot go back and edit the text! Grr.
We were going to head out again tonight, but the clear dark skies that were forecast, aren’t clear or dark.
It was great! If not for the cold… getting too old for this *$@(&@. The sunset was gorgeous
See the tweet from the field:
20210108_172321_CanonT7i_1T125s_F5.0_f155.0mm_ISO1600.jpg-IMG_2828annotated.jpg
