Airplane Between Inferior Planets
Taken by Helio C. Vital on July 17, 2016 @
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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Camera Used: Unavailable Unavailable
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Date Taken: Unavailable
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Details:
This 24-frame animation (11 seconds long) shows an airplane which was maneuvering for landing in Rio as it passed right between Venus and Mercury. I was recording a video of the close conjunction of the two major inferior planets (only 0.8° apart), shortly before they
set, when I noticed it. At that very moment, the planets and the plane were almost perfectly aligned. Still more amazing was the fact that the plane was equidistant from both planets. The corresponding mean horizontal coordinates were 4° altitude and 294° azimuth. Probably, if I had tried filming the pair some 300 hundred times, I would not have been able to get an airplane crossing right at mid-distance between them again. So what would be the odds?
The original (8.4 min. long) video was converted into an animation and posted at:
http://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=127488 The still image shows the exact moment of the triple conjunction "Venus-Airplane-Mercury" (in order of increasing altitude). A Canon PowerShot SX60 HS camera was used to record the video at a total zoom magnification of about 100x. The vivid color mode of the camera was selected to highlight the colors of dusk. PhotoScape was used to make the animated gif that shows the airplane crossing the field of view. The unusual close encounter was recorded at 17:55 (local time) or 20:55 UTC and sunset had occurred at 20:27 UTC.
Photographer's website:
http://https://www.flickr.com/photos/98669508@N03/
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