Four morning planets

There are four planets in the morning sky, about to be joined by Mercury as it moves away from the sun, over the next couple of weeks. That will give an opportunity to get all five of the classical planets in a single (wideangle) shot. In preparation I had a go on the morning of 20 Jan. I had a high vantage point looking over the lights of Portsmouth, UK, and took a number of shots as the sky slowly brightened. Mercury was still behind the low cloud by the time the other planets were disappearing into the twilight sky. The angle of the ecliptic to the horizon at this latitude is quite low, so even when best placed, Mercury will still be very low for me.

The angular spread from Venus to Jupiter is quite wide, and to keep them from the edges of the frame required me to go out to 12mm with my 11-24L on the 5DII (though in post-processing I have cropped back in a little here, so you could get away with a less extreme lens). The sharpness of this lens is amazing. It would be easy enough to cover them with a panoramic mosaic if you can't go so wide with a single shot. I've labelled the planets, which are currently quite evenly spaced. Relative to the others, over the coming days, Venus is moving left, Jupiter right, and Mercury will come from the twilight towards Venus. UK winter weather is notoriously unkind to astronomers, but I'm hoping for another chance to include all five. Meanwhile I'll settle for four.

This was 8s f/5.6 ISO800 at 12mm

Madweasel wrote in post #17868863
There are four planets in the morning sky, about to be joined by Mercury as it moves away from the sun, over the next couple of weeks. That will give an opportunity to get all five of the classical planets in a single (wideangle) shot. In preparation I had a go on the morning of 20 Jan. I had a high vantage point looking over the lights of Portsmouth, UK, and took a number of shots as the sky slowly brightened. Mercury was still behind the low cloud by the time the other planets were disappearing into the twilight sky. The angle of the ecliptic to the horizon at this latitude is quite low, so even when best placed, Mercury will still be very low for me.

The angular spread from Venus to Jupiter is quite wide, and to keep them from the edges of the frame required me to go out to 12mm with my 11-24L on the 5DII (though in post-processing I have cropped back in a little here, so you could get away with a less extreme lens). The sharpness of this lens is amazing. It would be easy enough to cover them with a panoramic mosaic if you can't go so wide with a single shot. I've labelled the planets, which are currently quite evenly spaced. Relative to the others, over the coming days, Venus is moving left, Jupiter right, and Mercury will come from the twilight towards Venus. UK winter weather is notoriously unkind to astronomers, but I'm hoping for another chance to include all five. Meanwhile I'll settle for four.

This was 8s f/5.6 ISO800 at 12mm

HTTP response: 404 | Byte size: ZERO

try posting your image again, it's not visible

Thanks Davenn, I seemed to have a bit of trouble uploading to Photobucket in the first place, but it looked ok when I made my post. I've now had another go, which seemed to go smoothly, so hopefully it can now be seen.

Beautiful.

Madweasel wrote in post #17870108
Thanks Davenn, I seemed to have a bit of trouble uploading to Photobucket in the first place, but it looked ok when I made my post. I've now had another go, which seemed to go smoothly, so hopefully it can now be seen.

ahhh that's it

nice one mate, well done ...
been cloudy every morning for the last 7 days haven't seen a thing

Great shot..

I was hoping someone would post the alignment.. It's been cloudy every morning here for the last week