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04/05/2022
04:40 am

Equipment Details:

Canon PowerShot SX 500IS
Ioptron sky tracker
8 minutes integration time
Subs of 30 seconds and 15 seconds

Post-processing Details:

Stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop CS 6

Image Details:

Close encounter of the Red and the Ringed planets with a visitor from Oort cloud.

Today morning skies were graced with a beautiful meet up of the planets Mars and Saturn who were mere a full moon distance apart. Mars was shining with a reddish light at magnitude +1.0 & Saturn shining with a golden light at nearly the same brightness, magnitude 0.9. The pair was about 1/2 degree of each other distance apart and Venus shone brightly with magnitude +4.1 just left of this pair.

In between these, Comet Kopff or 22P/Kopff can be spotted which is a periodic comet discovered in1906, it passed it's perihelion on 18th March 2022 and will make the journey back in about 7 years time. Current magnitude +9.55 and increasing.

Was lucky enough to capture this mesmerizing sight having all these 4 celestial bodies and making it my first capture of a planetary conjunction with a comet.

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