Date: 10 Dec 2006 21:28:56
From: John Nichols
Subject: A Four Planet Morning (And Bonus!)
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Because Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury were going to be estremely close this
morning in an arrangement that we won't see for almost another 20 years and
because this was going to be a very low to the horizon affair I got up at
4:15 and drove out to our club's dark sky sight. I got there about 5:15,
and spent the next hour sitting up my telescope and fiddling with a
piggyback slr camera mount to try and take some Moon pictures while waiting
for the above planets to rise. I wasn't successful in getting satisfactory
pictures, but that's a subject for another thread and day.
I started observing the big event around 6:48. I found them first with my
16x50 binoculars. For a few minutes I also tried my 90mm refractor using a
25mm e.p. for a magnification of 40, then a 2x Barlow for 80. All three
disks were extremely close, with the angular separation from Mercury to
Jupiter just a fraction over .17, Jupiter to Mars just over .58 and Mercury
to Mars also just over .58. The combination of this closeness and
brightness made it impossible for me to split them, even at a magnification
of 80x.
Most of my time I sat in my observing chair and watched them through my
binoculars. When I first spotted them they were 4 degrees above the horizon
and visible to the naked eye. When I quit, around 7:30 AM, they were up to
8 degrees, faint in my binoculars, and nearly impossible for the naked eye.
The predominant color of the three planets together was red.
After this I turned to the Moon. On today's date the Moon is 20 days old.
Most notable also getting Saturn, which had an angular separation of 0.23.08
southwest of the Moon, so I was able to get it within the FOV of my 25mm
eyepiece. Could see the rings, Saturn was a greenish color.
I noted the trilogy of Theophilus, Cyrillus, and Catharina which together
make up L8 on the Lunar 100 Card. These craters were right on the
terminator, Theophilus was filled filled with shadow.
In Serenitatis the Dorsa Smirnov caught my eye.
Altogether, four planets in one morning, plus the Moon!
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