Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn - Days Early

Due to the usual and frustratingly predictable winter overcast skies here in Waterbury, a community nestled in a valley between three ski resorts, yesterday was our only chance to capture a glimpse of the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn.  It was still three days before the actual conjunction (the point in time when the two planets appear the closest from Earth) but the weather forecast was indicating that Friday (yesterday) was our only option. 

Contrary to what we've been seeing in the media and in news articles lately, this conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn is not a terribly rare occurrence.  What makes this year's conjunction a little bit special is that the apparent gap between the planets in our sky will be smaller than usual at around 1/8 of a degree in our sky.  This conjunction actually occurs every 20 years but we usually see an apparent separation between the planets in our sky of around 1/2 a degree to 1 degree.  So, the two planets will appear closer together this time around than they normally do every 20 years.  The next time they will appear this close or closer will be approximately 60 years from now.  The last time these two planets appeared this close together in our sky was approximately 806 years ago.  403 years ago, the conjunction of these two planets with Earth were physically closer together but didn't appear this close together in our sky.  Even though Sheila and I viewed and imaged this conjunction a few days early, we still saw these two planets separated by only about 1/3 of a degree so that is closer together than what is typical for this cyclic conjunction or even closer together than we'll probably get to see in our lifetime.

For our viewing this year, Sheila and I had two obstacles to overcome.  The first was that we were unable to view this astronomical event from our yard due to trees blocking our view so this meant we would need to load everything into the car and drive someplace with an unobstructed view.  We chose Sheila's parents' house because they have a good southern view and they are only about a mile away from us.  This worked out very well but lugging around all this gear was definitely an obstacle.

The second obstacle was the frigid cold.  It was around 6° late in the day yesterday and this really affected both of us.  Sheila was shivering uncontrollably as hypothermia closed in on her body and her eyeglasses were frosted over completely.  Fortunately, Sheila was feeling a bit better by late that night after sitting under a heated blanket for a few hours.  I, however, ended up with frostbitten fingers.  My fingers were blistered and swollen last night and today my fingertips are a little painful whenever I touch something or wash my hands.  My fingers are slowly getting better though.  Handling all that metal in single digit temperatures was more than my fingers could handle but we made it home safely after a successful but frigid astronomy session.

Since we had to load a bunch of astronomy gear into the car, unload it all at Sheila's parents' house, assemble it all, then tear it down, load back into the car, and then lug it all back into the house last night, my spinal injuries are screaming at me.  Last night, my body was shaped like a human question mark whenever I tried to walk.  Today I'm standing a bit taller but the pain is still significant.  I had planned to move some snow today with the snowblower but my spine is screaming, "NO WAY, KNUCKLEHEAD!!!"  Instead, today will be spent drinking tons of water and loading up on Vitamin C for repairing connective tissue in my fingers.  I want my fingers to heal as quickly as possible, of course, so today will be a recovery day.  

There is one thing I am fairly certain about after our astronomy excursion yesterday...  I highly doubt I'll ever again load up the car with astronomy gear so we can view from some other location.  Well, at least not in the winter anyway!  A 'fair weather day' might be a different story, in time.  Yesterday, out in the frigid cold, proved to be an excruciatingly painful activity for me even putting aside the dangers of frostbite and hypothermia.  I highly doubt that Sheila would like to go down that road again either so I believe we are both on the same page here.  I honestly can't figure out how or why so many astronomers load up their cars every weekend or every night and travel to view from a dark site away from home.  This type of activity just to participate in another activity is far more work than it is worth, in my opinion.  Also, I clearly don't have the spine for this kind of activity either.

The good news is that we did manage to see both Jupiter and Saturn in my telescopes in the same eyepiece at the same time.  Even better is that I managed to capture a few decent images.

On Monday, these two planets will appear as one with the naked eye.  Yesterday, three days prior to their closest appearance as one in our sky, they appeared close...  maybe around two-thirds of a moon diameter apart...  which was close enough to capture a fairly decent image or two. Monday would be better but Friday was close enough to this historic event to get some decent photos.

I started tracking Jupiter while the sun was still up and the sky was blue.  Saturn was a bit more elusive until the sun started setting and the sky darkened a bit.  In the meantime, we also viewed the moon and the sun while it was still daylight. 

These two planets are a long distance from Earth.  Jupiter is about 550 million miles away and Saturn is behind Jupiter by another 450 million miles, approximately.  Because these giant planets are so far away, they do appear small in a telescope.  That being said, although distant and very small in a telescope, it is still easy to see the banding wrapping around Jupiter and the rings around Saturn.  They are very small but some details on each planet are still visible.  You can even make out some of Jupiter and Saturn's very many moons!  (Click on the image for a larger view.)

Equivalent view of 2142mm using a Sony a6000 camera.

I should point out that I had to combine multiple exposures to capture the moons and the planets in the same shot.  We could visibly see all of these objects when viewing through the eyepiece but cameras do not have enough dynamic range to record objects as faint as the moons when properly exposing for the planets.  So, I shot a bunch of exposures with the moons exposed correctly and then I shot a bunch of exposures with the planets exposed correctly.  I occasionally need to do the same for some landscape photos too so this is not anything unusual by any means.

Normally, I would want my views in the telescope to actually be magnified a bit more for planetary observing and imaging than we see in this photo (above) but, if I magnified my view any further, I would not have been able to capture both of these distant planets in the same frame because they were still not lined up as well as they will be on Monday evening, one almost right behind the other.  The size of these planets in this photo is pretty typical of what backyard astronomers will see while observing.  

That being said, astronomers who will be able to view and image this conjunction on Monday, when they appear the closest to each other, should capture some stunning images because they will be able to use more magnification making the planets appear a bit larger.  It should be noted, however, that this image above shows how small these planets will appear through an average telescope.  Where my telescopes differ is in the quality of the views and images.  My telescopes are better-than-average quality which produce better-than-average quality.  

I had two telescopes set up and each scope was set on its own mount.  The imaging telescope was an Explore Scientific ED APO Triplet 102mm refractor.  The observing telescope was a Skywatcher ED 72mm refractor.  Both scopes provided crisp views even though these planets were very low and close to the horizon.  The closer an object is to the horizon, the more atmosphere we need to view through and this makes for some very unstable and generally lousy viewing.  

Both of these mounts were tracking so I didn't need to constantly nudge the telescopes as the Earth rotated.  It took some doing to get both mounts up and running in the daylight though.  The single digit temperatures didn't help either.

Typically, during set up, you would set the mount and telescope lined up on the Celestial North Pole but this is difficult to do in the daylight.  Instead, I set up facing north using a compass, leveled each mount, set the latitude adjustment on each mount to our latitude, and then had the mount slew the telescope to the sun (using solar filters, of course).  I then adjusted the mounts to be lined up perfectly on the sun.  This was good enough of a polar alignment to allow the telescopes find and track Jupiter and Saturn.  

The frigid temperature was a real problem though.  Apparently, neither mount was liking the single digit temperatures.  I wasn't pleased with the temperature either!  One mount had intermittent electronic issues and the other mount got very stiff.  I later found that the intermittent electronic issues were due to a faulty power cable.  When I was tearing down and packing up again, I noticed that my larger mount (the one I used for imaging) was so stiff that I had difficulty turning the mount on either axis to get it back into its case.  Oddly, however, this mount had no problems tracking Jupiter, Saturn, the Moon and the Sun accurately so that was good.  LCD displays on my camera and tablet were slow and lagging too.

Another problem I had was with a new-ish inexpensive zoom eyepiece that we were using for observing this event.  Using a zoom eyepiece should eliminate the need to swap eyepieces but this particular zoom eyepiece proved to be more of a problem.  This cheap zoom eyepiece zooms from 24mm to 8mm so I figured this would be a good choice for viewing.  I had started with it set to 24mm because that provides the widest view.  Unfortunately, after sitting in the single digit temperatures for about an hour, I could no longer zoom this eyepiece.  It was frozen at 24mm.  This is a cheap eyepiece so this problem didn't really surprise me but I was a bit disappointed and annoyed.  Honestly, I don't particularly care for this eyepiece anyway so the disappointment of it freezing up on me wasn't so hard to swallow.  Actually, my thoughts are, "what a piece of junk!"  My advice here is to never skimp on the cost of good quality eyepieces.  I purchased an inexpensive zoom eyepiece and it proved to be a cheap piece of junk, as expected.  My next zoom eyepiece won't cost less than $300.  You get what you pay for in most things and this hobby is no different.  A sub-$75 eyepiece is junk.

While I was tracking the moon earlier in the afternoon, I captured a few images.  Here is one of them, below.  I figured that if I couldn't get a few good shots of Jupiter and Saturn in the same frame, at least I could come away from this endeavor with a decent shot of the moon.

There is no doubt that Monday will be a better day to get exceptional images but, if the weather refuses to cooperate, we need to do what we can when we can.  That opportunity was yesterday for us.  

Putting hypothermia, spinal pain and frostbite aside, at least Sheila, Will and I got to see these two planets lined up more closely than we had ever seen in our lives.

POST EDIT - December 20th:  Sheila has now recovered from hypothermia although she is worn out and could still use some extra sleep.  My frostbitten fingers are slowly getting better.  At the moment, they are no longer swollen and the blisters are mostly gone although still visible on my thumbs but being mostly back to normal is good news.  For the most part, all that remains is some prickly feeling whenever I touch something.  

I have no desire to ever lug even some of my astronomy gear to another location...  never again especially in winter weather.  I can't understand why anyone would subject themselves to doing this on a regular basis or even occasionally.  I know I'll never do this again in weather cooler than 40°.  

POST POST EDIT - April, 2021:  A lot of time has passed but I recently remembered that I needed to post an update here.  After weeks of healing painful frostbitten fingers after our afternoon outing for the conjunction, I started looking for better gloves.  I don't ever want to have to deal with frostbite again!

I found some "photographer's gloves" that are leather and lined with an inner glove made of Merino wool and Thinsulate lining.  The outer leather glove has sticky rubbery material to improve grip.  The forefingers and thumbs of these gloves both flip open to expose a forefinger and/or thumb as necessary to operate my camera or telescope.

These gloves seem to be quality gloves and they should keep my hands as warm as possible while shooting photos or using my telescope in the frigid cold.  Hopefully, there will be no more frostbite!