Jupiter 6.8° from Sun with No Telescope
Taken by Helio C. Vital on August 17, 2015 @
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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Camera Used: Canon Canon PowerShot SX60 HS
Exposure Time: 1/1250
Aperture: f/6.5
ISO: 1250
Date Taken: 2015:08:17 17:40:14
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Details:
On August 26, Jupiter will be at its solar conjunction. For 5 days now, I have used a Canon SX60 HS camera to capture it as it approaches the Sun. The contrast between its disc and the very bright backgound sky is now critically low, even at the highest optical zoom of the camera (130x). However, by using a fence on top of a building some 0.4 km away as a point of reference, I have managed to locate it. The task is not easy though. In the photos, the planet appears as a very tenuous and fuzzy whitish spot (pointed by yellow arrows) 5° above the horizon only 2 minutes after sunset. A mere 6.8° distance separated it from the Sun when the photos were taken, so close that the planet was already visible in Soho`s LASCO C3 realtime images. Clouds of smoke from a fire several quilometers away had significantly reduced atmospheric transparency, making it even harder to capture the planet in the intense glare of the Sun (last photo, taken using the vivid color mode to highlight the plume). On the other hand, as an amazing bonus, a distant plane flew past it, missing it by one arc minute only (first 2 photos). The photos were taken on August 17 around 20:40 UT.
Photographer's website:
http://https://www.flickr.com/photos/98669508@N03/
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