I made time to go and see the conjenction of Jupiter and Saturn. I’d originally planned to drive half an hour from home to Llano del Jable, on the island’s spine, but the observatory webcams showed that the clouds were higher than usual, so I went all the way up to the observatory. I haven’t done that for quite a while, but it was worth it. The longer drive meant…
Obviously these aren’t my photos. They’re all from NASA’s Juno mission.
Since I got there early, I got a chance to try to photograph the nearest star – our Sun, through a small telescope with a filter which lets through a wavelength called H? (pronounced H alpha). It was tricky. I’m pretty short sighted, and I can’t see well with my glasses squdged up against the viewfinder. For normal stargazing, I take my glasses off and refocus the telescope, but…
For the last few days, Venus and Jupiter have been very close together in the evening sky. I wanted to take photos on Wednesday and Thursday, but it was cloudy. I wished I’d asked to go up to the observatory, above the clouds. Lucky me, I got permission to go there on Friday evening to take photos. I’m really glad I made the effort.
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot was discovered by the English scientist Robert Hooke in 17th century. It lies very close to the giant planet’s equator and its major axis is 40,000 km (twice the diameter of the Earth. We now know that it’s a hurricane, which rotates anticlockwise with wind speeds around the edge of up to 400 km / sec. Photo taken by NASA’s Voyager 1 space probe.
This morning, the moon, Jupiter and Venus lay close together in the east. This photo was taken with a compact camera from Llano de La Venta viewpoint, one of the astronomical viewpoints on La Palma.