Astrokirsten
I spend a lot of my time on TikTok these days, one day I’ll tell the story and explain how it saved my life, for now you just need to know that I have an account and that it can be found here: @theshanelockwood.
As I was scrolling through videos, I came across this oneby a creator known as Astrokirsten.
Astrokirsten talking about the Great Conjunction.Image sourced from the video above.
Astrokirsten, or Kirsten Banks, talks about and explains all matters astronomical. You know, stars, space and stuff like that. The video explained what was going to happen on Monday night.
Monday night was the night of the great conjunction. Jupiter and Saturn were going to appear to be in alignment in the night’s sky for the first time in 20 years, the last time being in 2000 but the the last time they would be this close was in 1623 and the next time will be in 2080.
Awesome sauce!
The Preparation
I must admit to not being an astronomy buff, not at all. My interest in space extends largely to science fiction franchises like Red Dwarf, Star Trek and Star Wars. (How good was The Mandalorian season 2 finale, btw? Oh. My. Goodness!)
However, given the infrequency of this particular event, at least I would have the astrological equivalent of ”street cred” if I managed to see it.
Adelaide often has the tendency of missing out on these things due to cloud cover and sometimes just being in the Southern Hemisphere is preventative.
Astrokirsten mentioned a free download of a program called Stellarium. It’s a brilliant program that teaches astronomy, while showing you the night’s sky from the perspective on your own GPS based location. It has an adjustable time scale so you can see when the sun will set, and can select individual planets and stars to focus on. It even shows the locations of passing satellites.
It really is rather cool.
So, I download the app on my Samsung A11, a phone that I DO NOT RECOMMEND, because I
discovered, much to my chagrin, that is doesn’t have a magnetic sensor: something rather critical
in order for various apps to function properly.
RANT: God forbid I was in the outback and needed a working compass! It’s criminal that they can sell phones without it, here in Australia. END RANT.
Instead, I downloaded the app on my PC and iPad along with a compass app for good measure.
Sunset wasn’t going to be for a few hours yet, so I decided to head off down to my local fish and chip shop for dinner. You know I had to incorporate food somewhere into my post. Chuckle.
Quarter Chicken and ChipsSomewhere amongst that large pool of gravy and chips was a piece of chicken, peas and sliced carrots.
It went down a treat.
I went home and made a few TikTok videos I prepared and waited for the sun to go down.
My preparation came in the form of recharging my Canon camera battery, learning how to use an app based compass to figure out which way I was facing (seriously, which way is North these days?!) and using Stellarium to figure out what to look for.
The quickest way, I’ve found, is to face the moon (if visible) and work from there.
The Moon in relation to Mars
The Moon by itself
Notice how the moon phases are same between the app and the real thing?
Mars in all of it’s orange glory!The Great Conjunction
The next step is figuring out where Jupiter and Saturn will be relative to the Moon and my vantage point.
Jupiter in the crosshairs, in relation to the MoonFacing the Moon from my front yard, were large gum trees blocking my view, but I was lucky because there is a reserve near me with a clear area.
And then I saw it! Jupiter with Saturn behind it!
The need to cross the road to get a better vantage point turned to agitation as I impatiently waited for there to be a gap in the traffic. Time was of the essence!
A car pulled over to the side of the road further up from me, with it’s hazard lights blinking. Nope, no time for surreal distractions tonight, I was on a mission!
On the other side of the road, in the clearing, I could see it clearly just above the horizon. I took out my camera and too the photos you see above. I should have used a tripod to get a steadier shot, but I didn’t want to lug it across the road.
Then it disappeared behind some cloud cover! Bum! Was that it? I could always console myself with the fact that I’d seen it...
But no, the clouds moved and it was there again. I had to act now.
The Canon camera’s viewfinder was pitch black, matching my surroundings. My only light sources were the street lights behind me, the occasional passing car, residual sunlight and the moon.
By chance, the random sweeping movement of my outstretched arms caught a tiny white dot in the viewfinder. Carefully, I zoomed in and out adjusting as much as I could.
I managed to get the following photos:
Getting hard over astronomy - Phallic looking camera anomaly from JupiterAt this range, and with the zoom at maximum, just pressing the button on the camera can make it move with some random and amusing results, like the phallic image above.
But below is the conjunction itself. Well, sorta. Jupiter and Saturn are still separate and it’s blurry as anything, but still I’ll be long dead before it happens again.
I am sure there are far better images elsewhere online.
The Conjunction - Jupiter on the left, Saturn on the rightI had a 10 minute window with which to capture this image, before both planets went behind the clouds and beyond the horizon. One of the cool aspect of this experience is that I can now identify a lot more stars in the skies from using the app. So cool.
The cover image is of the Moon, blurry and sliced in two by the overhead powerlines. This was
accidental, but I thought it was artistic at the time.
The Stellarium app even has a Santa tracker, with some unintentionally hilarious results.
Accidentally suggestive screenshot from with the Stellarium appUntil next time and if I don’t have an post before-hand,
Please have a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year 2021.
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