My photos of the Jupiter Moon Conjunction 1-21-2013

First shot of the Moon from that night.

Ok so I went out after work, dragged out my scope and pointed it at the Moon. As I pointed out in my last post, Jupiter and the Moon were very close together in the sky. It was also a good chance to test out my new smart phone rig for my telescope. So I dragged it all outside and took in the beauty.

That night also happened to be my first astronomical observations of 2013! At first the Moon and Jupiter were not close enough for me to fit them into the view on my telescope. As you can see I went out about 748pm. Thanks to Sky and Telescope I found out the closest approach of the Moon and Jupiter would happen around 10pm. So naturally after taking a few more photos I went back in and waited patiently till 10.

Jupiter and 3 of its satellites.

Im also adding on here of a close up photo of Jupiter. Its similar to the one taken at 758pm. In the close up you can clearly see 3 of the 4 major moons of Jupiter. The fourth is hidden in the glare of the planet. The moons are, starting from top left: Ganymede, Europa (hidden), Io, and Callisto. Turning the exposure down also allowed me to view some banding features on Jupiter. They were not really noticeable in the pictures. Perhaps next time I will use a more powerful eyepiece.

The Orion smartphone adapter

Since I'm using an Iphone to take these photos they are not great. But I am always surprised at how good they actually turn out to be. What helped out was the SteadyPix Universal Telescope Photo Adapter from Orion. I used to just hold the phone up to the telescope. The results were usually hit of miss. usually miss. This was my first time getting to use the adapter. Took some getting used to but once I got it it worked great. The only draw back I found so far was that the adapter did not fit onto my 9mm eyepiece. So I was not able to get any good pics of the Jupiter cloud features. More testing needs to be done. The video I shot was spectacular! Very steady. I will post that later.

For those curious, my telescope is a Meade ETX-90. I was using a 26mm eyepiece to view the Moon and Jupiter. The phone is an Iphone 4 using the camera on the phone and an app called ProCamera. Plus the SteadyPix adapter you see in the photo. For more information on the ETX-90 plus many other helpful tips and hints visit: http://www.weasner.com/etx/menu.html . Also thank you to Sky & Telescope for the heads up and their Jupiter app!

Below is what I,m calling the money shot of the night. Both Jupiter and the Moon in the same shot!

The money shot!