Constellations and Planets



Monday 17th August: I got to the Observatory at 10:30pm and Brian was there gathering images of the Veil Nebula. The sky was crystal clear, the Milky Way was a very prominent misty arc stretching accross the sky from horizon to horizon. Jupiter stood shining brightly to the SE as you can see by this photo that I captured with my Finepix digital camera. So I started the night with photgraphing Jupiter as a bright star-like object against the backdrop of the Study Center. If you click on the image, as well as the planet, the stars Deneb Algeidi and Gamma Capricorni (V3.6), become visible (to the SSE and S resectively). Through 10x50 binoculars, two of the Galilean moons could easily be seen.



I ended the observing session in the morning at 4:30am by imaging the star-like planet Venus and the wanning crescent Moon. Unfortunately, I didn't get any webcam footage of Venus as it became obscured by a tree and then the patchy cloud rolled-in. Both Brian and I departed at 5am.

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