Planet Scenes March 2024
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March 26 A very large sunspot group that was responsible for a large solar flare in the last few days has crossed the Sun's meridian and is now headed toward the limb, so I was able to get a pic of it before it disappeared by the end of this week. |
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March 25 Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks is moving rapidly across the sky from northern Pisces to Aries and brightening until early April. I used a zoom lens set at 120 mm to focus on the area below Triangulum (below as seen from 38° north latitude in the early evening). |
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March 24 This evening, despite the full Moon, which will undergo a penumbral eclipse later tonight, we have a nice view of three planets arrayed along the ecliptic, Mercury, Jupiter, and Uranus. However we're also treated to a bonus of Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks coming in from the right toward α Arietis, or Hamal, later in the month. |
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March 20 Mercury is at the height of a nice evening apparition at which it stands almost vertically above the Sun's position after sunset, so even though it attains only around 17° elongation, it is quite prominent. For the first time, we can see Jupiter in the same field of a wide angle lens. |
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March 16 I tried out the intervalometer on my new D5000 with a 35mm lens to see if I could get a filtered Sun sequence in preparation for the eclipse in April. This shot was at ISO 3200, 1/1000" exposure, and f/11. It should be good at these settings to catch the entire eclipse from start to finish. |
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March 11 Following several days of rain, we were treated to a beautifully clear evening with a one day old crescent Moon ~ could my Celestron C-90 offer up a good image even without tracking the Moon's motion? I was also long overdue for getting a picture of Jupiter as it moved eastward through Aries. |
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March 7 After finally figuring out how to attach my Nikon cameras to my Celestron C-90 (an orange tube version from the 1970's or early 1980's, which has a focal length of 1,000 mm operating at f/11), I got a shot of the Sun on the afternoon of March 7 to see what the image scale will be if I use it for the eclipse. |
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