Planet Scenes 2018

	Venus & Mercury, December 19 Just like in 2002 and 2010, Venus went through well-south-of-the-Sun inferior conjunction in late October, but now it has soared up into the morning sky in Libra and is once again heading eastward against the stars.
		Comet Wirtanen, December 7 and 11 In early December, Comet Wirtanen made a favorable passage through the inner solar system and we were able to see it moving north from Eridanus through a corner of Cetus and then through western Taurus.  From this plot of the orbit from Sky & Telescope, we can see its positions on December 7 and 11 relative to the constellations.
	Venus & Jupiter, September 18 Just like in 2002 and 2010, Venus was headed for a well-south-of-the-Sun inferior conjunction in late October, and here we catch it just peeking over the cornfield along with Jupiter to the upper left.
		Venus, Saturn and Vesta, July 8 In 2018, Venus followed the same basic pattern it followed in 2010, 2002, 1994, and 1986, which is the first iteration of this type of apparition that I remember.  In 1986, I was stationed in Germany and followed Venus almost to inferior conjunction thanks to the excellent weather in September and October in southern Germany; in 1994 I was back in Virginia, but did not follow it as closely that year, nor in 2002, except for five planet gathering anchored by Venus that May.  In 2010, I caught Venus in Gemini during June.  Here, Venus is a month farther along in its apparition, this time approaching Regulus.  Later in the evening I got a nice wide angle shot of Saturn and a bonus of Vesta in the midst of the summer Milky Way.
		Mars and Saturn, July 5 Mars in nearly the same position the following night.  Saturn is bright in the western part of Sagittarius, north of the ecliptic and east of the emission nebula pair, M8 and M20.  Unfortunately, an unsightly red blob invaded the lower left portion of my camera's sensor LOL.
	Mars, July 4 I spent most of the summer of 2018 trying to observe Mars with a 12" f/8 homemade dobsonian that I bought in Texas earlier in the year, frankly without a lot of success.  The telescope was rather unwieldy and Mars underwent a severe planet-wide dust storm that obscured most of the interesting surface markings, so the observing season was disappointing.  Consequently, I didn't make as many efforts to get pictures of Mars' position among the stars, but on the night of July 4/5, I did get a few images.
		Jupiter, Saturn and Mars, March 24 On March 24, I got a couple of pictures of Jupiter in Libra and the pairing of Saturn and Mars in Sagittarius from my driveway east of Fredericksburg, VA.
	Sun, March 22 I decided to try out my new (probably 40 year old :) Nikkor 300 mm lens, paired with a white light solar filter from the 1990's, on the Sun to see how well it works ~ unfortunately, this year is near solar minimum, so there are no sunspots to make it interesting.  When paired with my cropped-sensor camera, the focal length is like a full-frame camera using a 450 mm lens.
	Venus, February 27 This is my first image of Venus beginning its evening apparition, here only 12° away from the Sun.  The 2018 showing of Venus is very similar to its 2010, 2002, 1994, and 1986 events.
		Mars and Jupiter, January 7 Early morning in 2018 saw Jupiter and Mars engaging in a close conjunction as Mars passes the giant planet on its way toward an excellent opposition in late July, while Jupiter is set for opposition in May in Libra.
	Uranus, January 6 Early in 2018, the variable star Mira in Cetus was near maximum brightness and so I took the opportunity to catch both it and the planet Uranus in neighboring Pisces on the same image.

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