Planet Array
Taken by Alan Dyer on January 6, 2025 @
near Gleichen, Alberta
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Camera Used: NIKON CORPORATION NIKON Z6_3
Exposure Time: 20/1
Aperture: f/2.8
ISO: 800
Date Taken: 2025:01:07 11:59:57
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Details:
This is a backyard panorama on a rare clear night in January 2025, with the first quarter Moon high in the sky between Venus, setting at far right, and dim Saturn above it. Bright Jupiter, at centre, is above Orion in Taurus. Reddish Mars, then nearly at its brightest and closest for the year, is to the left of Orion in Gemini.
This illustrates the array of planets visible at this time in early 2025. This month there was a lot of media hype about a "planet alignment" — well, here it is, with four of the naked eye planets above the horizon at once. Only Mercury is missing.
Plus Uranus and Neptune were in the sky as well, but too faint to see with the unaided eye, though the camera did pick up Uranus as a pale green dot. All the planets were in a line across the sky. That's not rare — they always are! The line is called the ecliptic (marked here in the labeled version) and is the plane of the orbits of the Earth and planets.
Mars was near opposition, placing it opposite the Sun, while Venus was near greatest elongation, placing it as far away from the Sun as it can get.
Note: The panorama projection stretches out and distorts star patterns along the top of the frame.
Technical:
This is a panorama of 11 segments, at 30º spacing, stitched in Adobe Camera Raw, with the ultra-wide Laowa 10mm lens at f/2.8 for 20 seconds each, untracked, and on the Nikon Z6III at ISO 800 in landscape orientation. Taken from home on January 6, 2025.
Photographer's website:
https://amazingsky.com
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