Clear Skies Ahead

on DECEMBER 7, 2020

I wanted to start this post with “gone are the cloudy skies of summer,” but it seems we may get a few sprinkles this next Thursday. Regardless, the days are warmer and sunny, and the skies generally clear at night so that opens up some quality time for stargazing and astrophotography. We’re already tracking the tides, swells and winds for surfing, but now we’ll be tracking the moon phase and rise/set to find good nights for hanging out on the roof.

This shift in weather comes just in time for a fun celestial event: the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn (https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/great-jupiter-saturn-conjunction-dec-21-2020.) For us, if you look to the west/south west, you can see Jupiter and Saturn getting slowly closer and closer heading for their conjunction on the solstice, December 21 . On this date, they will look like one big celestial body as the gap between them will be incredibly small. We pulled out the small telescope the other night and I saw Io and Europa (a couple of Jupiter’s moons) for the first time. So freaking cool! I really wish we had an eyepiece for the newer Celestron telescope, or even one for the almost 50 year old garbage can-size telescope that we got as a gift from our neighbor, but alas, we’ll have to do with the small telescope for now.

Last season, Switch got to familiarize himself with his new astrophotography set-up. I got him an equatorial mount that tracks with the spin of the earth and a fancy new telescope. It is a fussy and technically challenging hobby (definitely not my thing,) but I love to see the results. My job is to keep the warm tea and podcasts going for the multiple long exposure layers of photos needed to get a good shot of nebulae and other objects.

We are using an old DSLR for now, but it helps to have a special camera outfitted with a sensor that can capture the kinds of gasses present. The one we are using can detect oxygen, but other gasses like hydrogen and helium are not visible. We bought a special camera for just this purpose which is currently stuck at a friend’s house in San Francisco. COVID hit after we ordered it and messed up the supply chain enough to delay past our move date. It’s too risky to ship to Mexico or drive up to get it, so there it sits, probably annoying our friend. We’re hoping to pick it up when we can finally travel again.

Here are a couple shots took last year practicing on the new set up.

The Horse Head Nebula

The Orion Nebula

The Andromeda Galaxy

Orion and Trifid nebulae

Switch has a way to go as the shots still include some drift, but as first shots on a new set-up, I think they’re fantastic! I’m hoping we can get a shot of the conjunction – we’ll see if the weather and moon phases cooperate. If nothing else, it would be cool to get better shots of Jupiter and Saturn with their moons.