Seven planets and slender crescent Moon:

On the evening of the 1st March I took some snaps of the seven visible planets and the slender crescent one day old Moon in the twilight sky using both a normal camera and a telescope. With little time to waste as dusk fell, I set up my Sony ZV-E10 camera with a 23mm Sigma lens on a fixed tripod in the direction of where four of the planets were grouped together with the Moon low down in the SSW sky. I focused the camera on Venus, composed the shot and then used the cameras internal intervalometer to take time lapse images in the hope of capturing suitable breaks in the clouds to record the planets. At the same time I set up my Sky-Watcher 80 ED telescope on the lawn and used my ASI 533MM Pro camera and a luminance filter to focus on the Moon and took two different exposures to capture the slender crescent and an over exposed crescent showing Earthshine. I then slewed to Venus, re-focused and synchronised the scope to capture a few frames before moving on to Mercury to repeat the operation and then on to nearby Neptune; adjusting the exposures to suit in order to capture its dim photons against a dusk sky. The really tricky one was Saturn however, being so low down near the horizon, but a lucky break in the clouds allowed enough photons through the remaining thin cloud to record the planet before it set. The wide field camera took several images where cloud breaks revealed the Moon and all four nearby planets, so with the difficult targets completed, I then had a relatively easy job of completing the planetary captures by repositioning camera and scope towards a much darker area of sky to image bright Jupiter and its 4 Galilean moons, Uranus and some of its moons and finally brilliant Mars. I compiled two montages showing both the wide field and telescope snaps to record this over-hyped alignment event for posterity. The images aptly demonstrate why many people failed to see more than three or four planets during this particular alignment.

Click on an image to get a closer view

Venus

Uranus

Saturn

Neptune

Mercury

Mars

Jupiter

Chris Bowden