Triple Planet Conjunction – Observing Venus, Jupiter and Mercury

Yesterday I got a chance to observe the triple conjunction of Venus, Jupiter and Mercury this month. It had been awful cold and cloudy weather the past weeks, and it is again cold and cloudy today (and for the next weeks, I presume). So when yesterday we had one sunny – but cold – day, with blue skies and only a few small clouds interspersed, I had to see the conjunction for myself.

Shortly after sunset

The good news: I saw the conjunction. The bad news: I didn't manage to take a photo of it.

This photograph captured a glimpse of what I saw…

 

What was there to see…

Naked eye observation:
Venus was first to become visible, at about WNW. It was something like 15 to 20 minutes after the Sun had set behind some hills that Venus became visible in the West, very bright, slightly over the horizon (about a hand's width). No stars were visible at this time.

After some time a slightly dimmer Saturn appeared to the lower left of Venus.

This was followed after some more time by a Mercury (that was first noticed with an 8x21 binocular), to the left and higher than Venus. With the naked eye Mercury was barely noticeable.

The angular distance between Venus and Mercury was about twice (give or take) that between Venus and Jupiter, with Mercury being vertically above Jupiter (give or take).

Without my glasses I was not able to notice any of these three planets – not even Venus.

Observation with 8x21 binoculars:
All three planets were clearly visible in small 8x21 binoculars. But I spend little time with binoculars as I moved on to the telescope.

Observation with 76mm/700mm Optus refractor telescope:
The distance between Venus and Jupiter filled almost the field of view both with the CZJ H40mm eyepiece (about 1.5 degree FOV and about 17x mag) and with the LOMO Sym17mm eyepiece (about 1.4 degree FOV and 42x mag). So the apparent separation between Venus and Jupiter was about 1.3 degrees (give or take).

Both Venus and Jupiter were clearly discernible as discs at both at 42x with the LOMO Sym17mm, and at 70x with the Spindler Ortho10mm eyepiece – albeit small discs. Jupiter is about 45 arcseconds in diameter at the moment, and Venus about 10 arcseconds.

For Jupiter I thought I could discern horizontal stripes at 70x mag, but conditions were not good (my very small experience, cheap and not properly collimated telescope, Jupiter barely above the horizon and still much light from the Sun) – with that I would not say I saw the actual stripes of Jupiter.

I attempted to view Mercury in the telescope, but gave up after a short time as pointing the telescope (with its awful, awful, awful az-alt-mount) was very difficult for me.

The pointing of the telescope was made worse by the fact that I used the telescope without glasses (short eye relief of 8mm for the Spindler eyepiece), but had to put my glasses on to use my improvised finder (a simple tube in lieu of an real finder)… So either I need a finder system that – for me – works without glasses (that would rule out any "telrad" type of finder), or I need eyepieces that work with glasses. I'm not thrilled as I don't want to spend any money for this at this time.

Before packing up I tested the collimation on some stars, but couldn't get a proper focus. The collimation is still off, it seems… Will try to collimate the telescope with an artificial star.

A photo taken while the conjunction was visible, just to the left of the frame… ;-(

Photography:
The problem with photography was that I set the camera's field of view while the Sun was still up, and forgot to adjust it once the conjunction was visible. Too many instrument (two cameras, a binocular and a telescope) and too little focus on the task. Oh well.

As it turns out I also took the wrong lens anyway. I took my 17mm-85mm telezoom, which of course has an high f-ratio of f/5.6 at 85mm. This means long exposure time and long streaks. What I should have taken instead was my 50mm prime focus lens (that was still in some package from my last move) with an f-ratio of f/1.8 – with this I could have used shorter exposure times at the fully opened aperture. The things I should have known since long – but have long forgotten, it seems.

Also, I probably should have switch to a higher ISO setting. I used ISO 100 (as I do for the daytime shots), but ISO 200 or maybe even ISO 400 would have been much more sensible…

An additional problem with photography was that I wanted the conjunction to be close to the castle (to mimic Thierry Legault's wonderful shot of the conjunction above Mont-Saint-Michel), but from the observation site I choose (with the help of Google Earth and a little bit of scouting by binocular) there was too much distance between the two – the conjunction further south, the castle further north. Next time I should choose a site a bit further north, but don't know if I can see the city as well from there…

Loose ends:
After I was packing up – it was cold and my muscle ache was no longer ignorable – I saw for a second a very bright thing, about NNW, maybe 30 or 40 degrees above the horizon. This was possibly a satellite flare I guess.

Telescope Magnification Comparison

I made a (daytime) comparison of what the different eyepieces will do with the telescope I have. The telescope is a cheap used "OPTUS" Newton reflector, with a spherical 76 mm (3 inch) mirror and a focal length of f=700mm. I gather it was made long ago by "Synta" and you could get it under many brand names like Skywatcher/Sky-Watcher, Konus, Bushnell, iOptron, Tasco, Celestron or Bresser.

My telescope came without eyepieces, but can handle eyepieces in the 24.5 mm (0.965 inch) diameter, so it readily accepts the microscope eyepieces I have with 23,3 mm (0.92 inch).

In the spirit of the 5€ telescope I used a small and cheap point&shoot (Canon  A800), which I held by hand to the eyepiece. A small camera can be held directly to the eyepiece to easily make images.

The camera was "modded" with CHDK, which makes it possible to set all kinds of things to manual (like exposure). But CHDK is a pain in the ass to use – it is written by people who couldn't care less about user interface it seems. Seriously, you can set "Disable Overrides" to "Disable" and "Off" - WTF????

Don't know yet how these eyepieces will do with nighttime stars instead of daytime sculptures – but here are some daytime images for your pleasure:

My f=700mm telescope with different eyepieces (larger image)

I tried to keep the images consistent (same exposure, same focus, etc.), but couldn't quite manage it...  I haven't yet managed to switch off autofocus, so I had some focus problems. Especially the image of CZJ 6,3x is out of focus due to camera problems, but the telescope/eyepiece was focused.

The "No Zoom" images were all made with f=37mm (Full-frame equivalent), 1/500 second exposure and f/3.0 aperture. The "3.3x Zoom" images were all made with f=122mm (Full-frame equivalent), 1/250 second exposure and f/5.8 aperture.

With this fixed exposure/aperture/focal-length one can see nicely the differences in brightness. Especially the Spindler 25x is darker – with the eye (or with longer exposure) the image by the Spindler 25x is bright enough though.

The Spindler 25x with proper exposure (but decisively unproper focus…)

A hand-held Canon A800, a 700mm telescope and a LOMO 15x ocular 

– who needs expensive DSLR telephoto lenses?

I will probably not use the Noname 6x and the CZJ? 15x, as they don't seem to offer any advantage. The wide-field of the LOMO 15x is really apparent, it has nearly the same actual FOV as the CZJ 6x. Though finding the Moon was much easier with the CZJ 6x than with the LOMO 15x. BTW: The FOV of the Spindler 25x is bigger than what the camera can capture.

Let's see how it will do with some night sky – but again not tonight, as it is overcast here…

Addendum:
One thing I noticed during the daytime is that in low power (e.g. f=40mm eyepiece) one can almost "see" the spider/secondary, which causes a sort of "shadow" in the middle of the image (one can see the spider/secondary once one steps away from the eyepiece). Here is what I found (about a different telescope):

The StarBlast is not a very desirable scope for terrestrial observing: first, its image is upside down/reversed (common for astronomical scopes); and second, it won't focus close-up. Furthermore: during the day you are very likely to see a vague shadow of the secondary mirror in the field, at low power; this disappears at night when your eye's pupil opens up, within the proper "exit pupil" range. Normally the StarBlast works easily at the maximum dark adapted eye entrance pupil (in fairly young folks) of 7 mm, using about a 28 mm focal length eyepiece (16x, at 3.6 power per inch of aperture). One might be tempted to use a rather commonplace and easily available 40 mm focal length 1.25" ocular. I'd rather not be too dogmatic (as no actual 'harm' will be done): but DO NOT DO IT! For, an eyepiece of this focal length produces an exit pupil of 9.9 mm: way too big, causing a light loss and vague optical aberrations.

First Light!

As the sky cleared up in the afternoon and an waxing Moon was hanging in the sky, I thought best not to wait for the nightfall, test the telescope right away and make some images – which was a good decision. It was a cold day and later the night it was very cold, as the entire spring was very very cold here (probably due to global warming, hah!) and I really don't feel that good, so I did not went out again at night.

So, only some images of the Moon in the daytime. I used a "point and shoot" camera, which I held by hand to the eyepiece, and I used a bit of the optical zoom of the camera to fill the frame.

At about 17x magnification.

 f=700mm with f=42mm eyepiece

At about 42x magnification. 

f=700mm with f=17mm eyepiece.

At about 70x magnification. 

f=700mm with f=10mm eyepiece.

The images seen directly by the eye were better than what the camera could capture – not much better, but noticeable better. No camera noise, and the eye (or rather the brain) can filter out the movement of the air, and use clues to enhance the perception of features.

I need to clean the eyepieces! And I should remove the reticle from the f=10mm eyepiece. Oh well. :-) At night, the imagea should be a lot clearer without the sky's blue shine robbing contrast.

But not bad for a 5€ telescope! Sure, the eyepieces would cost a lot more, but I had them already, so I still consider it a cheap scope.

While the optics are fine (considering the price), pointing the scope is truly horrible, the az-alt "fork"-mount is awful, awful, awful. I made some slight improvements, so the telescope does not shake that much. Before the modifications it used to shake like a leaf for 2 to 3 seconds, after the modifications it only wobbles a bit for about 1 to 2 seconds. But pointing the thing remains awful. And at 70x magnification, the sky (and everything in it) really moves! The reticle makes that nicely visible. And when I tighten down the screw for azimuth, both azimuth and altitude change by about a third to a half of the FOV of the 10mm eyepiece!

Still, I could see Mare Imbrium half in the shadow. Luna 17 and Apollo 15 had landed there, and carried with them the very first rovers! Lunokhod 1, the first uncrewed rover, and Apollo's Lunar Roving Vehicle, the first crewed rover. And at the edge of Mare Imbrium were very prominent the Montes Caucasus and Montes Apenninus mountain ranges, and Archimedes Crater – the angle of the Sun at the moment really makes them stand out now. Too bad I didn't make a photo with the 10mm eyepiece of that area.

Instead I made an image of the lunar craters in the south. Wow, that thing has some scars!

So much for first light. Despite its deficiencies, this scope is nice.

The Mars Canals And Changes Of Paradigms

Interesting:

… Planetary observers with superior telescopes, too, were subjected to the scorn of those astronomers of the time who had given way to the "standard paradigm", existing for some decades, that the vague markings of Mars, barely seen when the planet was at closest opposition every few years, were "linear", "doubled", and possibly indicative of artificial constructions. It was also widely asserted, and believed, that the Martian surface was rich with vegetation, which grew and subsided with the seasons. These opinions had become almost the norm by the time that Lick astronomers, such as Barnard, turned the mighty Clark 36" refractor telescope, then the world's largest, onto the planet.

But, in the early 1890s Barnard beheld -- to his amazement -- not a fine working of "canals" (or channels, as they would have been properly translated from the Italian) but a plethora of natural surface details: huge gullies, chasms, craters, and formations of a rocky terrain. I once held in my own hand Barnard's drawing, about 5 inches in diameter, made at the eyepiece, which he copied to his astronomical mentor Simon Newcomb, with the report that in clearest seeing, he saw NO "canals" but only ordinary surface details in such profusion as to overwhelm the senses. Barnard was, in fact, so intimidated by Percival Lowell and William H. Pickering at Flagstaff's renowned Lowell Observatory -- founded to study Mars -- that he felt could not publish his "anomalous" observations, so sure were the users of smaller telescopes that "canals" and forests were being accurately spotted. Barnard, who had only a bachelor's degree in mathematics (at the time a junior observer at Lick) felt that he could not sustain the damage to his reputation that would be done by the expected denunciations that would surely emerge from the disputatious and condescending Pickering and Lowell.

This reminds me of the current state of climate science, where people rather hide their "anomalous" results, for fear of denunciations from the "hockey team" – because the "standard paradigm" is that human emissions of CO2 are a catastrophe, and nothing but a catastrophe.

I Have Got A Telescope!

On Sunday I purchased a telescope for 5€ on a flea market (similar to this scope). It is a Newton reflector, with a spherical primary mirror of 76 mm (3 inch) diameter (which is small but somewhat okay) and 700 mm focal length (which is good), which gives it a f/9.2 long focal ratio (which is good). Entry level, cheap Asian built, available under many names – the mirrors seemed to be OK though. The metal bits however were in pretty bad condition and had quite some rust, and there were cobwebs inside.

The OPTUS "Rat-scope"

Huh?!?! Was it left outside??? I know it was cheap, but not that cheap.

I took it apart, took care of the worst bit of rust, cleaned the mirrors, they show their age but are usable as it turns out. I gave the tube a new paint job, reassembled it and tried it out with some of my microscope eyepieces.

 The Optus 76/700 reflector telescope, with a new paint job (and an added "finder" scope)

The (partially dismantled) Alt-Az mount in its full gory glory

Currently I use these three microscope eyepieces:

• A Carl-Zeiss Jena 6,3x (about f = 40 mm, Huygens type) which I use instead of a finder scope and it gives me nice 17x magnification. The eyepiece itself is more a narrow apparent field of view, but with the low magnification this gives me a good wide actual field of view.
• Then I have a LOMO 15x (about f = 17 mm, Huygens Ramsden Symmetrical type) which is nice and gives me about 42x magnification. The eyepiece has a really wide-field of view and I like it a lot. From what I have gathered, the "symmetrical" type is similar to a "Dial Sight" or a "Plössl".
• And finally I have a Linos Spindler Hoyer 25x (f = 10 mm, Orthoscopic type, AKA "Abbe", which seems to be a well correct "Super Plössl", possibly made by Will, Wetzlar) which is a bit darker, but gives me nice 70x magnification.

I guess 70x is then about the limit of this scope for dark objects, considering that it has only a 76 mm (3 inch) aperture. Maybe a Plössl or Ramsden SR in the range of 6 mm to 4 mm will give me somewhere between 120x to 175x for looking at the Moon, and possibly some planets like Jupiter, Saturn and Mars – but this will have to wait.

[Update] Having tested it now at 70x magnification with the Ortho10mm (and having read Steve Waldee can go with clear skies up to 350x in his similar 3" scope), I can say this scope can probably go to much higher magnifications. [/Update]

During the evening, looking into neighbours windows (about 3/4 of an kilometre away) it works like a charm! And I haven't even collimated it. The screws of the secondary are stuck (but looking through the scope without the eyepiece the position of the secondary seems halfway right). And I haven't taken the time to look up how to properly collimate the primary (the screws for the primary are OK, so I should be able to collimate the primary). The awful azimuthal mount is quite shaky, but the image is really good, considering that is not collimated, and how cheap it was – a real scope of death. :-)

Too bad the night sky is overcast at the moment… I want to look at the Moon first and then in the future maybe some of the deep sky objects. The Orion nebula is not visible this time of year, and I haven't yet looked up where Andromeda is this time of year. And I want to aim it at Mars, Venus, Saturn and Jupiter, possibly all the planets – depending what is visible here. The view of the sky here is a bit limited, so it is a bit of a challenge – but this fits a scope with a shaky mount and no finder scope.

And no matter how bad people think this "little" scope may be, it probably is much better than what Newton or Galileo had… And after all the eyepieces I have are rather good.

I for my part look forward to a bit of skygazing. And the eyepiece position give me a much more relaxed viewing position than my 7x60 binoculars – those turned out to be a flop. The optics of my binos are so-so (and might actually be OK for what I want to do, though the magnification is not enough), the viewing position however is really awful, without some sort of "bino chair"… I can't wait to see something in the sky with my scope!