Time Lapse astronomy series

Yesterday Venus was nearest to Mars, you can just fit a full moon (half a degree) between them. It was cloudy but I still managed to take a sneak peek. Today is much clearer and you can see Venus is moving fast, already in Leo now (compare this to July 6, or even July 13).

This time I have both constellations in sight. It is easy to see Scorpius as a scorpion. It's heart is Antares, with three star above it forming the head and claws. It is also easy to follow the stars on the other direction forming a "J" shape up to its sting or thorn. On the other hand, it is quite hard to imagine a centaur for Sagittarius (or even Centaurus). Many resort to view it as a "Tea Pot". It makes a lot of sense to me - a triangle on the left is the lid, four stars on the lower left form the handle, the pot's mouth points towards Antares.

For obvious reasons ancient Greeks/Romans named this third brightest celestial object as the Goddess of Love (Venus/Aphrodite). Every time when Venus dominates the evening sky in the west, I feel an unexplainable sense of joy and hope. This time round Venus is slowing moving from Cancer to Leo, Virgo, Libra, etc. She's getting brighter every day! In the coming 5 months, please stay a bit longer after watching sunset in a clear evening till you see an extraordinarily bright 'star', it is Venus, our sister planet. You won't get it wrong because no other planet or star can be that bright (except the Sun and the Moon, of course). She will reach greatest (eastern) elongation (maximum angular distance from the sun) on 30 October, by then she will be between Scorpius and Sagittarius. Her peak brightness will be on 8 Dec 2021, roaming between Sagittarius and Capricornus. Feel her love when Venus visits your zodiac sign (though it's a different location in the sky if you are a serious Astrologer).

With its nemesis (Orion) hidden behind the sun, Scorpius now dominates the sky - especially for the southern hemisphere winter, the night is much longer than the day. The catch - it is wetter here in winter . Even when Scorpius emerged out of the mist towards the end of the video, we still missed Sagittarius (or the Tea Pot) On the top right (near the azimuth) we have the pointers and part of the Southern Cross (see the thumbnail).

I tried to recapture Leo (up side down) in a clearer evening, but later the clouds win again. The video thumbnail labels the stars at a certain frame. Hope this helps. Regulus is the Lion's heart, Denebola its tail. Alphard, orange/red, is the brightest star (alpha) of Hydra.

This is the first time lapse I captured with a cheap wide angle lens - effective focal length (35mm) about 11mm. I was glad to see Leo, upside down, low in the north west, appearing among the clouds. Cancer was a bit hard to identify on the left.

Disclaimer - no blood moon seen due to heavy cloud cover. We are located in a perfect location expected to be able to see the eclipse from start (entering pen-umbra) till end (exiting pen-umbra). Though the outcome was disappointing, it served as a very good exercise or practice. Hopefully, better luck next time. Background music: A magical season (Video Editor of MS-Windows 10)

(I did shoot the recent lunar eclipse but since it was cloudy..... I am still working on what I captured.) I used auto-ISO setting again and was hoping to capture the sunset, twilight and then Orion setting into the sea/horizon, in one continuous time lapse. Hiccups: Despite great weather during the day, there was no sunset due to clouds near the horizon. I didn't notice the street light glare when it got dark. So I had to move the camera in the middle of the shooting - that why you may notice the tree suddenly disappeared. Challenge: see if you catch Venus (in fact together with Mercury) hanging low in the horizon - use maximum resolution and look at frame 2021-05-30 17.46.06, it is above the passer-by on the left) Encoded at 30 frames per second, it may be better viewed at half speed. Towards the end you can also see Gemini appearing from the right (north) and of course Sirius from the top. I tried deflickering the video but decided to post the original video.

I found a setting for automatic ISO sensitivity so that the camera can capture pictures continually over the period where light intensity drops significantly after sunset. However I made a low level mistake, the pictures were slightly out-focus. Another drawback of auto-ISO is the flickering that doesn't go away even with deflickering software.

Launceston, Tasmania is further south, so the Celestial South Pole is even higher. The night sky was good and gave me a nice view of the Milky Way. However it wasn't dark enough to reveal the Magellanic Clouds. Towards the end of the time-lapse we can see the whole constellation of Centaurus, not just the "pointers" , on the bottom left.

I set my intervalometre to capture Scorpius fully first but my estimate was wrong, again! Antares and the thorny Scorpius tail was at the top when the video started. It is easier to recognize Sagittarius as a "tea-pot" with its mouth up, handle facing down, lid on the left. Towards the end Saturn rises above the roof on the right. If the capture lasted longer I could capture Jupiter, Mercury and the twilight of dawn also. On the other hand, I can treat this as an improvement to a worse attempt a day before. Target for next time - 2:30am to 6:30am. Where is the Milky Way? I will have to try it again in a place with less light pollution.

Another chance to capture the waxing crescent moon. In the later part we see Mars and Hyades with Orion appearing above.

Comments wanted: do you prefer this deflickered but lower resolution version, or the original 4K version?

With a nearly perfect weather and a sea view at Glenelg North we saw the planets drifted further apart. From time to time I adjusted the shutter speed (from 1/100 to 6 seconds) as it got darker and had slightly moved the camera, causing a few jitters. I have also come up with a slideshow demonstrating the movement of the two planets relative to the background stars (see episode 10) As promised this is the deflickered version with lower resolution.

Mars had a recent conjunction with Uranus on 21 Jan. Now they have drifted apart. Uranus is just visible with naked eyes. On the right (east) we see Pleaides and Hyades the famous star clusters of Taurus. The Pleaides (or Seven Sisters) is known as Subaru in Japanese. The bright star near Hyades is Aldebaran - the "Bull's eye". Note the northern constellations seen from down under are "up side down".

You may notice the stars started roughly where I stopped last time (see 2020-12-25 Celestial South Pole 01) I compared the two sets of time lapse photos and found that pictures showing the same look are roughly 100 minutes apart. For example the photo taken at 9.30pm looks almost the same as that taken at 2020-12-25 11.10pm when the Southern Cross appeared. You can figure out the Celestial South Pole in the video by putting your mouse cursor at where all the stars are rotating around. In real life, one usually start with the Southern Cross, and with imagination extend 4.5 times its length from its bottom. Towards the end of the video, the pair of pointer stars (to Southern Cross) appear near the cypresses.

After a long search I found a free version of Stellar Info. It perfectly recovered almost all of the corrupt jpg files on my SD card. I'm glad I kept the card untouched till now. (note: this is not just an undelete issue, because I used an undelete program earlier and only got corrupted jpg files) I am feeling great to share this recovered version as it contains some of the best pictures taken in the series.

After a lot of photo editing, I have come up with a slideshow of the changing positions of the two planets to the stars in Capricorn kept relatively fixed in the middle top throughout. Lessons learned - use same focal lengths and keep camera level (to reduce the need to rotate the photo later) as much as possible, during the days of shooting. Music from Soundcloud - Jay Someday "Stardust" Also lot of thanks to my friend Paul who helped me with a crucial step

It was almost a full moon rising in the beautiful twilight with Adelaide City on the right. Look for parts 01, 03 and 04 if you are interested. As they are not related to time lapse or astronomy, they are in a different channel.

With a nearly perfect weather and a sea view we saw the planets drifted further apart. From time to time I adjusted the shutter speed (from 1/100 to 6 seconds) as it got darker and had slightly moved the camera, causing a few jitters. I am reviewing the photos from 3rd December and see if it is possible to come up with a slideshow demonstrating the movement of the two planets relative to the background stars. If I fail then this will be the last of the recent conjunction episodes. I will anyway work on producing future interesting events. In the mean time, have a safe Christmas and Happy New Year from Glenelg North seaside! The video can be improved, I will try out deflickering software.

Weather was good. Shooting window got even shorter as the planets moved further nearer to the Sun. In the later part I moved the camera to a different spot in a hurry and the effect wasn't ideal.

Did you know you cannot see this in the Northern Hemisphere? Share it to anyone who still believe the Earth is flat! I am a fan of conspiracy theories but this one is too obvious to solve. OK, back to the real stuff. Jupiter and Saturn are now close to the Sun making the time lapse video too short for them. I am still capturing photos of them to create a day-to-day time lapse video. Shortly after they disappear I find this is also worthwhile doing - the rotation of stars around the Celestial South Pole (CSP). 240 photos were taken at 20 sec intervals gives 4800 sec or 1hr20min actual time. Video is produced in 15 frames per sec, this gives a 16 sec play time. It means the video you are watching is 300 times faster than actual. Not long enough, right? I'll make it longer next time. The famous Southern Cross appears at the later part of the video.

This time I went to the beach in Glenelg North hoping to get a better view. It all started beautifully.... One day after the big day, they were still very close to each other and you may have to zoom in. Saturn is now visually between Jupiter and the Sun.

Recommend to play at slowest speed and highest resolution (best on a TV). Unfortunately the clouds win again while the moon was still annoyingly bright. Sigh! I only got a few successful frames in the first few seconds for this big moment. Anyway if you can zoom in towards the bottom left you should be able to see the "double star". From today the planets will move apart and get closer to the Sun. I will share more videos if they worth the effort. Otherwise this will be the end of the Jupiter and Saturn conjunction series. Please make comments if you find better videos and pictures showing the satellites of both planets, they must be spectacular.

Recommend viewing option: 0.5 speed, high resolution, play it on TV if possible. The time slot for a good view of the two planet reduced as they move closer to the sun and the moon gets brighter. So I had only 5 seconds from the original view. I supplemented the video with a view from another spot in my backyard. Hopefully the moon moves further away tomorrow and the time slot can be wider.