Monday, July 30, 2012

Venus Jupiter Conjunction Ends

VENUS JUPITER CONJUNCTION COMES TO A CLOSE

 The Jupiter Venus Aldebaran conjunction comes to a close because its southern path puts it behind the skyscraper's south wall at Observatory Lab 50 and the project must be concluded. Lab 50 is used for celestial events rising in the East, northerly objects and star fields, and testing various Big Brain eyes.

In the small photo, at top is Jupiter, to the right of Jupiter is Aldebaran in Taurus, with Jupiter below.

At least three other stars are visible, some of which can be corroborated with the black and white photo.

The color photo was taken July 29th, 2012 at 04:01:46 am at f/2 with a CCD imager and a one second exposure (IE at 1.7). The ISO was pushed to 1,600.

The photo converted to black and white was taken at 04:04:31 am with the same imaging settings. The image is processed to see more stars through the heavy light pollution of downtown Taipei. Shown to the left of 101 is Auriga and Capella with the Pleiades at top right.

One might wonder why not continue to take shots like the small color photo...this was dangerously obtained by hanging out over the safety guard railing at a height of hundreds of feet in the air. Another reason the photo is small is because the CCD is hand held for this view and motion occurred during the exposure. To minimize the appearance of trailing, the image was reduced.