Jupiter's near miss with the Moon, 18th February, 2013.
A few days ago Jupiter was occulted by the Moon, when viewed from Southern parts of Australia but here in SW Sydney we viewed a very narrow miss. After our Macarthur Astronomy Forum, everyone started snapping with their mobile phones and cameras.
MAS Vice-President Tony Law leading the imagers outside UWS.
I took some with my little Olympus SZ-14 too, but on auto-shoot (exposing at 1/4 sec), the images really needed a tripod to steady the camera, so I am not publishing any more of them. However, after I arrived home, I set up my Canon 60D on a tripod and took a lot more:
Canon 60D ready to image the conjunction.
The Moon is very bright (as much as -12.9m when full) and Jupiter is a lot dimmer (-2.9m at conjunction). So it is very difficult to obtain a decent image of them both without over-exposing the Moon or under exposing Jupiter. The following image, taken at 12.04 am struck a reasonable balance between the two:
Jupiter-Moon near occultation, 12.04 am 19th February 2013
(60D, 200mm 1/100th sec, f/2.8, ISO-250)
The brightest Moon of Jupiter is Ganymede (only +4.4m at conjunction) and the other three Galilean Moons are dimmer still. They are not seen in the above image but are all visible in the following longer exposure, taken a few minutes earlier. With a two seconds exposure, the Moon's sunlit side became predicably over-exposed but the Earthlit side was very visible, along with a couple of other stars in the constellation of Taurus. Jupiter, too, was slightly over-exposed. From left to right the moons are Ganymede, (Jupiter), Io, Callisto and Europa. (Io and Callisto appeared very close in this shot).
Jupiter-Moon near occultation, 11.53 pm 18th February 2013. Note Earthshine.
(60D, 200mm 2 sec, f/2.8, ISO-250)
Whilst I am advocating the advantages of astro-imaging with a camera & tripod in this series of articles, the view of Jupiter next to the First Quarter Moon would have also fitted very snugly in the field of view of my 8" LX-90!