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today and tomorrow are the times when Jupiter and Saturn are really close to each other (less than a tenth of a degree apart)!!! So I just want to reach out to everyone for them to share their photos of the conjunction!

Parameters:

  • Specs for the camera (exposure time, time taken, etc)
  • Your photo! (duh!)
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    $\begingroup$ I think this question is a great idea. Sadly, it has been cloudy and/or foggy for the past week where I live $\endgroup$
    – jng224
    Dec 21, 2020 at 8:05
  • $\begingroup$ This year has been the first time my eyes aren't good enough to see Jupiter and Saturn as separate points of light - was really hoping for clear skies to take a photo tonight, but it's terrible weather here. I should have taken one last night - perfectly clear skies :-/ $\endgroup$
    – Rory Alsop
    Dec 21, 2020 at 16:30

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Here's one from earlier today.

Mobile phone camera, held above 4.5mm eyepiece, connected to 80mm aperture 560mm focal length refractor:

Conjunction on Sunday

Will try again tomorrow with a different camera.

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    $\begingroup$ Great photo! +1 I'm still waiting for my telescope to arrive xD $\endgroup$
    – WarpPrime
    Dec 21, 2020 at 2:47
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So, I've been going outside for the past couple days to get what photos I can, in case it's cloudy the day of the actual conjunction. Turns out that the two already look great, and after a couple of days of fiddling around with taking the actual lens off of my camera and trying to take photos directly from my telescope's eyepiece, I managed to snag some not-so-bad photos today.

You can see some color on Jupiter, three of its moons - four, maybe five "if you squint", as they say - and the rings of Saturn are pretty clear. I was able to see five of Jupiter's moons, I think, through my telescope, and one of Saturn's, but photos always degrade quality. This image is a composite of a couple different photos - I combined them in a pretty odd way, to say the least, and did some "cheating" with cropping and scaling. But, for less than an hour of trying to get photos, I'm satisfied with the result. Hopefully I can get some better stuff tomorrow and in the following days as well!

(For reference, this is using a Canon Rebel T3i, which is a nearly decade-old camera, and my eyepiece isn't phenomenal. I'm also using a 10" Dobsonian telescope for all of these photos. My exposure times on the various photos range from 1/600 seconds to 1/10 seconds, and my ISO ranges from 800 to 6400.)

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ Beautiful! But I'm confused how this photo was taken. Is this with the camera lens off and the image sensor at the primary focus of your Dobsonian reflecting telescope? If so, why is there chromatic aberration (red on the tops of everything, blue on the bottoms) and why say "and my eyepiece isn't phenomenal"? $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Dec 23, 2020 at 22:48
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    $\begingroup$ Sorry, maybe I didn't clarify - I went through multiple attempts to get decent photos of the two. I tried taking my camera lens off and putting it right in front of my telescope eyepiece, putting it in front of just the telescope with no eyepiece, and then I tried with both my telescope eyepiece and my camera lens. That actually seemed to work. I aligned my telescope eyepiece and my camera lens, and that's how I took these images. I'm still a bit of a newbie to techniques like these, so I'm going to do some more research and experimentation when I have the chance. $\endgroup$
    – Calc-You-Later
    Dec 24, 2020 at 7:35
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    $\begingroup$ I also had to degrade the quality of the image to post to the site, since there's a size limit, just FYI. $\endgroup$
    – Calc-You-Later
    Dec 24, 2020 at 7:36
  • $\begingroup$ oh I see, got it. Thanks! $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Dec 24, 2020 at 8:39
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Here is my photo: Specs:

  • Camera: iPhone 12
  • Exposure: 4 seconds
  • Time taken: 5:37 PM EST (UTC-05), 12/20/2020
  • ISO: 350

Resolved picture of Jupiter and Saturn

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This was taken from my telescope (twinstar, 150mm x 1400mm) with my samsung smartphone (handheld, just in case).jupiter and saturn

PS Why is it so difficult to get the phone to take sharper pictures with the telescope? Not that it was NASA-sharp, but it was sharper, nevertheless.

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    $\begingroup$ Beautiful photo and great question at the end. I think you can post a new question in the main site here in Astronomy SE or in Photography SE and include this entire post almost as-is with a good title like "How to control/improve my focus and exposure when doing smart phone + telescope astrophotography?" I think the answers might begin with "Download a simple photography app for your phone". For some phones there are even free apps that allow you to access more powerful controls over focus and exposure so you don't have to rely on the phones automatic settings. $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Dec 23, 2020 at 20:00
  • $\begingroup$ Jupiter's moons look to be very nicely in focus considering astronomical seeing. I don't know if it would have worked in this case, but the first thing I would have done is to zoom in as much as possible so that Jupiter was large, then touched the screen there to try to convince the phone that Jupiter is the region of interest. It might or might not have then focused on it a little better and probably would have lowered the exposure. $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Dec 23, 2020 at 20:03
  • $\begingroup$ In this image it seems that the phone exposed long enough to make the background gray and figured the planets were just bright streetlights and therefore overexposure wasn't an issue. If your phone has it, you can also try turning on HDR $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Dec 23, 2020 at 20:06
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Not in the spirit of the question - but I received this Christmas e-card from the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes (I am a regular observer there). Taken at the prime focus of the 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope on 21 December 2020. The WHT has recently been fitted with a new prime focus field corrector, giving it a massive 2 degree field of view (in preparation for the WEAVE wide-field multi-fibre spectrograph this year). The picture is a colour-composite taken through red, green and blue filters with a CMOS camera. No idea what the exposure time is - probably very short!

WHT picture of the Great Conjunction

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    $\begingroup$ just... beautiful. Thanks for sharing! $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Dec 23, 2020 at 20:08
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$\begingroup$ 
iPhone 6
Color Space: sRGB
Exposure Time: 1/15
FNumber: 2.2
Focal Length: 4.15
Focal Length In 35mm Film: 29
ISO Speed Ratings: 1,600

TIME: 2020-12-17 17:51:53 UTC+8

From UTC+8 I could get the Moon parallel to the pair of planets together with a local character who is particularly fond of crescent moons.

LOCK Jian, crescent Moon, Jupiter and Saturn

LOCK Jian, crescent Moon, Jupiter and Saturn LOCK Jian from the movie OPEN! OPEN!

Click for full size. 2nd screen shot from 《OPEN！OPEN！》超大預告第二彈！ See also IMDB OPEN! OPEN! and Wikipedia's "OPEN Jian"

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This is neither a photo nor created by me, but the Google Doodle for the Great conjunction is the cutest thing I've seen in a while (except for Baby Yoda/Grogu):

enter image description here
(Source)

If this isn't appropriate here, just tell me or simply remove this answer

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    $\begingroup$ I think that once in every 800 years an answer like this is okay :-) $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Dec 23, 2020 at 20:09

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