Planets at dusk at the end of December 2008

December 27, 28, 29, 30 and 31 pictures

Venus and Jupiter in late dusk on 27 December 2008 from the Sauerland somewhere between Iserlohn and Altena (Germany) - very transparent atmosphere but Mercury had already disappeared.

The view towards the East in the following minutes: Orion and Gemini rising.

Jupiter and Mercury at early dusk on 28 December 2008 from Bonn-Endenich (Germany): While Jupiter at -1.9 mag. is obvious, Mercury at only -0.7 mag. and deeper in the haze is struggling. However by comparing these 4 pictures you can find a faint spot always at the same relative 5 o'clock position close to the treeline: that's it! The planet could not be seen with the naked eye. (All pictures with maximum optical zoom, x10.)

The wide view as Mercury was about to set; it was not possible to get all three planets in one image. More pictures from exactly the same site are here (mirrored here and here)! There was no chance to catch the slender crescent Moon this evening though it was possible a couple of hours later e.g. in Kansas, Arkansas and Colorado.

Jupiter and the crescent Moon on 29 December 2008 from Königswinter-Heisterbacherrott (Germany): Mercury was seen in binoculars after relocating but had just slipped behind the trees when the camera was ready for the 2nd row of pictures. (Meanwhile the situation in Hamburg, Würzburg and Austria; earlier there were even occultations of both planets by the Moon which for Japan passed between both planets.)

The situation on 30 December 2008 from the same location; it's still hard to get Venus & Jupiter in one shot - let alone Mercury which someone in Bavaria was able to barely catch, however. Plus views from Bonn (Mercury very hard) and Hamburg (neither Mercury nor Jupiter here).

The view on 31 December 2008 from Witten-Vormholz: Contrary to what was initially written here, the complete double conjunction was imaged successfully! If only pair-wise, the Moon & Venus (extremely easy) and Jupiter & Mercury (extremely hard; only Jupiter was spotted visually while I found Mercury in the images only a day later after being alerted about the relative position in a new year's music show at Bochum Planetarium as well as by this beautiful image taken just a few hours later). A nice atmosphere in any case; the final two shots are from Witten-Herbede.

All pictures by Daniel Fischer with a Panasonic DMC-TZ2 compact camera and no tripod except for the final evening (though for the starrise pictures after the first the cameras rested on a car roof)