I got up early this morning to catch the planets dancing.
My internal clock woke me at 5:15 a.m. this morning. I had time before the planets would rise above the horizon but I didn't want to risk going back to sleep and sleeping through the event. So I wandered downstairs to look at the sky. It was perfectly clear.
To the east I could see the Big Dipper's handle hanging downward like an icicle. Below that was the brilliant Arcturus in Bootes and to the southeast of that was bright Spica in Virgo. The moon was south and behind the roof of my house. Its glow was washing out nearby Saturn and the constellation Leo, where it resided.
I went to power up my computer and check my planetarium software so I would know just the right time to expect the planets. I came up with a time of 6:10 a.m. My horizon to the east (and all the other cardinal points) is rather flat so I figured I had some time to kill. First I tried working on Christmas cards in my photo software but I kept getting an error. So after checking my mail and surfing the net a little I climbed back into bed. When I next checked the clock, it was showtime.
I jumped out of bed and raced downstairs. I was surprised at how bright the sky had gotten over the past 15 minutes. The stars were vanishing and a warm glow was spreading along the horizon. I began to think I wasn't going to see it. I feared that the window of opportunity was too small - the planets had come up too close to sunrise. But then I used my binoculars to make a quick scan of the horizon and immediately two bright lights shone out at me. I removed my binoculars to look in the same direction above the same tree -- and there they were.
I lumbered out across my snowy deck to get a better look. Mercury and Jupiter, the brighter two, were stacked nearly right on top of each other. Through the binoculars I could also see Mars, lying a small distance to the right and quite a bit fainter. I never could see Mars without my binoculars. Through the binoculars I not only saw the three planets but the background stars. Beta Scorpii sat right above Mercury. But the planets were obvious by their brightness and disk shape, instead of being pointlike.
I had brought out my digital camera to take a few photos. First I tried it at automatic setting. I was thinking it would be better to capture more of the surrounding darkness. I took three photos, and could see no planets in any of the images. Then I changed it to shoot without the flash, steadying it on top of the railing of the deck to reduce any blurriness from my movements. I took two photos this way. One was blurry anyway, and one came out relatively clear. Because I do not have a very good zoom on my camera, I had to crop way in to the picture to be able to see the slightly smaller Mercury above Jupiter. Mars was not visible in the photograph.
You can see the photograph, which is now accompanying my article on the conjunction.
