3 replies to this topic

[Jon Isaacs]

Friday morning, my wife and I were up at our place in the high desert. I'd spent a good part of the night observing but was up early with my wife. 

 

I looked out the front door to see the sunrise and saw Venus and the moon. I called her to come look as we've had some memorable views of the pair over the years. I saw the bright body below the moon and said, "Wow, that could be Mercury." A quick check of Sky Safari said it was.

 

This photo was taken with my Pixel XL smartphone in the Nightsight mode.

 

 

Jon

[Mike G.]

Nice catch, Jon!  nice exposure as well.

[Barlowbill]

Dang it!  I tried 2 days ago and could not catch Merc.  Might have been a little late.  Nice pic

[imtl]

Jon, I captured the trio as you did alongside with Jupiter, Saturn and Mars in an amazing single night, 4 years ago down under in NZ.
 
The story was that I had about only half an hour to take pictures of all this and I was stopped by a police car while running up the hill, in my pajamas at 4:30AM, with a camera and tripod, to get a clear shot of all this.
They thought I stole the camera/tripod and didn't believe me when I pointed to the dots in the sky and tried and explain to them what I'm doing. Eventually I've convinced them that I would probably be the dumbest looking thief if I steal stuff like this in my pajamas... Then I showed then a picture of Saturn and they were hooked. (Actually they were bored and went home while mumbling something about crazy astronomers in pajamas....)
 
But anyways, here are the shots I made that evening. With just a point and shoot camera and a manual tripod. Lucky imaging all the way.

  
Thanks for sharing this.