Planetary Gathering
Taken by David Blanchard on February 6, 2016 @
Flagstaff, AZ
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Camera Used: NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D700
Exposure Time: 15/1
Aperture: f/4.0
ISO: 800
Date Taken: 2016:02:07 11:06:24
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Details:
The planets Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter are all visible in the morning sky this month. A fish-eye lens can capture all of these in a single image while a rectilinear ultra-wide cannot capture Jupiter. Thus, I was content to capture four planets plus the moon early in the morning.
These images were taken from Mars Hill, home of Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. It was Clyde Tombaugh who discovered the [dwarf] planet Pluto from this site in 1930. A quick look at a star chart will show that Pluto is located just above Venus on this morning -- but at a magnitude far too faint to be imaged with a DSLR. So, perhaps, I got five planets after all.
In the distance can be seen the flat top of Anderson Mesa -- home to numerous telescopes as well as the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer.
It should also be noted that Flagstaff is the worlds first Dark Sky City. As a community, we constantly struggle with the inevitability of growth while trying to balance that with the need to keep our skies dark.
Photographer's website:
No URL provided.
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