Tag Archives: Venus

Viewing the Total Solar Eclipse from Siguenza, Spain with an iPhone 16e

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Like almost everyone, I carry a cell phone everywhere, and I also used it to try to capture the eclipse.

I had a cell phone eclipse filter that came with the eclipse glasses, but I couldn’t really get it to work.

My favorite kind of cell phone photography is the pano shot, rotating myself around to get an extremely wide angle view.  I think the iPhone excels at that.  I took a pano shot showing the row of photographers to either side of me just before totality.

I took a pano shot during totality that also shows Venus above and to the left of the eclipsed sun.

I also took some pictures of the setting sun.  The pictures I got from the Panasonic LUMIX camera were better, but these were not bad.

What an amazing experience!  Pictures from four different cameras, all of them interesting in their own way, but none better than being there in person.

Do you have a favorite?

Camera geek info:

  • iPhone 16e Fusion camera 26 mm f/1.64

Viewing the Total Solar Eclipse from Siguenza, Spain with a Panasonic LUMIX camera and a 12 – 60 mm lens

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I had deliberately limited myself to a single, wide-angle 12 – 60 mm lens for my travel camera, a Panasonic LUMIX DC-GX9.  I didn’t want to waste time swapping lenses during totality, and my goal, like with the GoPro, was to capture the wider field, trusting the SeeStar to capture the eclipsed sun itself.

Nevertheless, the first temptation was to image the eclipsed sun.  And, unlike the SeeStar, the image wasn’t saturated, so the hot pink solar prominence on the left side of the sun showed as hot pink, although with a 60 mm lens, there wasn’t a lot of detail.

Then I followed my plan and took pictures of the eclipsed sun with the landscape.  I took some with the 12-60 mm lens set at 24 mm, capturing Venus as well as the eclipsed sun in one of them.  Venus was about 50% illuminated, so it was a half-moon shape, although again with this lens there was not a lot of detail.

I also took some pictures with the 12 – 60 mm lens set at 60 mm.  Venus was out of the frame for this one.

As the Moon moved away from blocking the sun, I stopped taking pictures … until sunset, when the sun was clearly a crescent and then a fin as it set behind the mountains.

What an amazing sight.

Which view do you like the best?

Camera geek info:

  • Panasonic LUMIX DMC-GF7 set at f/5.6, 15 second exposure, ISO 1600
  • LUMIX G VARIO F3.5-5.6/12 – 60
  • Corona image: 60 mm, ISO 200, f6.3, 1/40 sec exposure
  • Widefield image: 24 mm, ISO 3200, f8, 1/40 sec exposure
  • Widefield image with Venus: 24 mm, ISO 200, f6.3, 1/40 sec exposure
  • Normal image: 60 mm, ISO 3200, f8, 1/13 sec exposure
  • Sunset images: 60 mm, ISO 200, f14, 1/50 sec exposure

A Beautiful Conjunction: the Moon, Venus, Regulus … and Starlink?

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My tracking mount is now in the shop, so I thought I’d have to go without taking astrophotos for a while … but when I woke up early yesterday morning, my husband recommended I go outside and check out the conjunction of the crescent Moon, Venus, and the star Regulus.  It was beautiful!

I got my old setup – my trusty Canon 60D and tripod and intervalometer/cable release and set up to take some pictures.

As I was focusing on the Moon and looking at camera view screen, I saw a satellite moving across the dark face of the Moon!  How cool!  Then I saw a second satellite moving across the dark face of the Moon in the same direction, which made me suspect I was seeing Starlink satellites.  

I processed the best image I took in PixInsight and discovered there was a bright spot on the face of the Moon.  So I used the GoSatWatch app on my phone, set to 0 degrees horizon and no limit on magnitude to get all the satellites, and figured out which satellites crossed the face of the Moon when my picture was taken.  There were a ton of Starlinks which made them the very high probability source.  My time stamps are only good to the minute, and I don’t have the exact time the Starlinks crossed the moon although when they were high in the East was a good stand-in, but it looks like there were two potential Starlinks crossing the Moon around the time of my photo!  

It was a pretty neat thing to see, and I think it would be fun to try to capture a bigger satellite (eg the International Space Station) crossing the Moon with my telescope after I get my tracking mount back.  Something to look forward to!

Camera geek info:

  •             Canon EOS 60D in manual mode set at f/4, 1/60 second exposure, ISO 1250
  •             Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM lens, set at 200 mm, manual focus on lunar craters
  •             Tripod
  •             Intervalometer used as cable release

Mercury and Venus – May 22, 2020

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Friday was another day when, because we didn’t get the predicted rain, I was able to enjoy some astrophotography: in this case, a conjunction of Venus and Mercury.  (A conjunction is when two objects appear near each other in the sky.)  Note that, even in the picture, you can see that Venus is a crescent.  Like the Moon, Venus has phases, depending upon how much of its sunlit side we can see.  In fact, it is even more of a crescent than it looks in the picture – only about 5.3% illuminated – as you can see in this neat animation.  If you zoom in, you can see that Mercury is also not a circle – it is 67% illuminated.  The two are different because they’re in different parts of their orbits relative to the Earth.  Venus is close to passing between the Earth and the Sun, so we see very little of its sunlit side.  The lines between Mercury and the Sun and the Earth and the Sun are almost perpendicular, so we see a much larger percentage of its sunlit side.

I have rarely seen Mercury, so this was a real treat.  It’ll be visible for a few more weeks in the evening sky, so if the clouds stay away, I’ll have another look.

Camera Geek Info

  •             Canon EOS 60D in manual mode set at f/5.6, 1/30 second exposure, ISO 800
  •             Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM lens, set at 300 mm, manual focus
  •             Tripod

Moon and Venus – April 26, 2020

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TaurusMoonVenus 20200426

Sunday evening the Moon moved closer to Venus in a lovely spot in Taurus.

Camera Geek Info (Moon and Venus in Taurus)

  •             Canon EOS 60D in manual mode set at f/4.5, 1 second exposure, ISO 6400
  •             Sigma 24-70 mm f/2.8 EX lens, set at 42 mm, manual focus
  •             Tripod

MoonVenus 20200426

Camera Geek Info (Moon and Venus)

  •             Canon EOS 60D in manual mode set at f/4.5, 1/25 second exposure, ISO 500
  •             Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM lens, set at 135 mm, manual focus
  •             Tripod

Moon 20200426

Camera Geek Info (Crescent Moon)

  •             Canon EOS 60D in manual mode set at f/4.5, 1/320 second exposure, ISO 500
  •             Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM lens, set at 135 mm, manual focus
  •             Tripod

Moon and Venus

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MoonAndVenus 20200424

Ever since planting my virus victory veggie garden earlier this month, I have become like a farmer, obsessed with the rain.  The forecasters keep saying the rain is coming, and then it doesn’t.  The upside of that is: clear skies for astrophotography!

On April 13, I tried to capture a picture of Comet C/2019 Y4  (Atlas), but no joy.  It was falling apart and too dim to find from my suburban driveway.

Last night, the Moon and Venus made a lovely combo at sunset.  Even with the 300 mm lens on the camera, Venus looks like a bright blob – not circular, but not with any shape.  In my husband’s 15×50 Image Stabilized binoculars, it looked the same as with the camera.  However, with my 8-inch telescope, it was a beautiful crescent (although much fatter than the moon).  It was an interesting demonstration of the benefit of a bigger aperture.

I thought the new Moon setting into the trees was also a lovely sight.

MoonInTree 20200424

Camera Geek info (Moon and Venus)

  • Canon EOS 60D in manual mode set at f/2.8, 1/20 second exposure, ISO 500
  • Sigma 24-70 mm f/2.8 EX lens, set at 32 mm, autofocus

Camera Geek Info (Moon and trees)

  • Canon EOS 60D in manual mode set at f/5.6, 1/2 second exposure, ISO 500
  • Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM lens, set at 300 mm, autofocus
  • Tripod

Dell City Astrophotography April 2019

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Last weekend we took a break and visited Dell City, Texas, where we stayed in a lovely B&B, enjoyed gorgeous sunsets and sunrises over the Guadalupe and Cornudas Mountains, and enjoyed seeing the stars and planets.

As the song goes (sing it with me, y’all):

The stars at night

Are big and bright

Deep in the heart of Texas!

It is true!

And I had great fun trying to get some good pictures of the beautiful sky full of stars.  But just like folks buying new telescopes need to be reminded that they won’t get the views that they see in the published pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope, I had to learn that the view from a telephoto lens isn’t the same as the view from an 8-inch telescope.  So the Messier objects, which are nice objects to find in my 8 inch telescope, are mostly fuzz balls with my telephoto lens, even with a sky-tracking camera mount and the ability to take a long picture.

The other thing I had to deal with was an embarrassment of riches – there were so many stars that it was hard to make out the constellations.

I started the evening of April 27 trying to find the two brightest available comets, but they were really too dim to be seen.  I did get familiar with the constellation Leo, and saw a beautiful meteor pass through it – it’s even in my picture, though it’s very faint and you have to zoom in.

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Camera geek info:

  • Canon EOS 60D in manual mode set at f/4, 30 second exposure, ISO 1000
  • Sigma 24-70 mm f/2.8 EX lens, set at 24 mm, manual focus
  • iOptron SkyTracker with ballhead
  • Tripod

I turned from there to finding Messier objects, and found M13 in Hercules, M4 in Scorpio, and M80 in Scorpio.  Fuzzballs all.

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Here’s a closeup of M4 with the blinking lights of an airplane.  (M4 is the fuzzy one.)

M4AndAirplane

Camera geek info:

  • Canon EOS 60D in manual mode set at f/4, 30 second exposure, ISO 1000
  • Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM lens, set at 70 mm, manual focus
  • iOptron SkyTracker with ballhead
  • Tripod

Finally, I waited until Jupiter rose to get a picture of it with its line of moons.

JupiterAndMoons20190428

Camera geek info:

  • Canon EOS 60D in manual mode set at f/4.5, 30 second exposure, ISO 1000
  • Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM lens, set at 150 mm, manual focus
  • iOptron SkyTracker with ballhead
  • Tripod

The next evening it was cloudy, so we got up early the following morning for a last view of the stars.  It was totally worth it – we got a lovely view of Sagittarius between Jupiter and Saturn and the Milky Way just before dawn.

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Camera geek info:

  • Canon EOS 60D in manual mode set at f/5, 30 second exposure, ISO 1000
  • Sigma 10-20 mm f/4-5.6 lens, set at 13 mm, manual focus
  • iOptron SkyTracker with ballhead
  • Tripod

I also was able to zoom in on Jupiter and a couple more Messier objects.

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Camera geek info:

  • Canon EOS 60D in manual mode set at f/4, 30 second exposure, ISO 1000
  • Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM lens, set at 70 mm, manual focus
  • iOptron SkyTracker with ballhead
  • Tripod

I’ll finish with Venus at sunrise on April 27.

VenusGuadalupeMtns20190427

Camera geek info:

  • Canon EOS 60D in manual mode set at f/7.1, 1/8 second exposure, ISO 100
  • Sigma 24-70 mm f/2.8 EX lens, set at 24 mm, autofocus

I can’t wait to go back and try this again!

 

Moon and Venus

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MoonAndVenus20180615

Last night, as we exited the movie theater, we saw a beautiful conjunction of the Moon and Venus, with a bright Venus floating above a crescent moon.  The cell phone pictures did not do it justice, nor did my hastily set up picture shot from the car window.

MoonAndVenus20180616

So I prepared to take pictures tonight.  The Moon had moved!  Still a beautiful conjunction, yes?

Moon20180616

And since I had the tripod set up, I captured a picture of the Moon as well.  It would be fun to explore its cratered surface.

Camera geek info:

Moon and Venus 6/15/18

  •             Canon EOS 60D in manual mode set at f/4, 1/25 second exposure, ISO 800
  •             Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM lens, set at 70 mm, autofocus on moon

Moon and Venus 6/16/18

  •             Canon EOS 60D in manual mode set at f/4.5, 1/5 second exposure, ISO 320
  •             Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM lens, set at 112 mm, manual focus on moon
  •             Tripod

Moon 6/16/18

  •             Canon EOS 60D in manual mode set at f/5.6, 1/60 second exposure, ISO 320
  •             Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM lens, set at 300 mm, manual focus on moon, IS off
  •             Tripod