The skies cleared as evening approached. The Moon was aligned with Earth and the Sun. Their syzygy at 9:30 pm CDT brought the Moon into the umbra of the Earth’s shadow. Desktop software gave a simulated view like this. The faint inner circle is the umbra. The larger circle is the penumbra.
My camera was mounted on a tripod and set for capturing images about every 15 minutes starting at 9:30. The images were cropped to place the umbra in nearly the same place in each image. That placement highlighted the movement of the Moon over the 15 minute time periods between photos.
During April 2022, the morning predawn sky had Venus, Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter in various alignments. In the last days of April, Jupiter approached Venus and closed the angular distance between them as seen from our perspective on Earth. This short video shows the locations of the planets as time is stepped forward from 27 April to 4 May. Notice how Earth, Venus, and Jupiter are nearly along the same line of sight at the middle of that time interval.
I hoped to get an image of Venus and Jupiter on 30 April when they were at their closest angular distance of about 0.3˚. Our Moon’s diameter in the sky is only 0.5˚. But, cloudy skies during that time prevented any sight of the pair. Today, 4 May, the sky was finally clear. I got a good image of Jupiter well past and to the right of Venus. This composite aligns today’s image with 3 previous images.
I assumed someone in the world had a clear sky on 30 April and got an image of the two planets together in the same field of view of a telescope eyepiece. I check daily for interesting astronomical images on Spaceweather Gallery. There I found an image by Particio Leon in Santiago, Chile, taken at 11:27 am local time. They displayed differences in size, phase and surface brightness. He used a Canon Canon EOS Rebel T7i through his 8″ telescope with settings of f/6, 1/320s, and ISO100. I took the liberty of rotating his image to simulate my view from the northern hemisphere if I had been able to witness it myself.
Webb’s mirrors now direct fully focused light from space down into each instrument. This alignment allows each instrument is capture images. For the next two months, work will be done to commission each of the four scientific instruments. Performance appears better than the engineering team’s most optimistic predictions.
The NASA blog posted 28 April 2022 by Thaddeus Cesari describes the significance of this milestone in greater detail. Images in the post can be enlarged to show the great detail achieved by each instrument as well as the Fine Guidance Sensor. They are impressive. In addition, this one minute video from the blog summarizes the accomplishments.
The Moon was watching from below as Jupiter and Venus neared each another. This view was at 5:40 am local time. The closest approach for the two planets is Saturday 30 April. They will be separated by less than the width of our Moon. Get up and see it if you have clear skies.
Two days ago, I viewed Venus as it crossed the meridian to the south at 10:26 am. I attached an old smart phone to the eyepiece in order to confirm settings and setup. It was an easy target. Image quality was not very good. But, it worked.
Venus @ 10:26 am 19Apr2022
I tried to image Jupiter as it passed the meridian at 11:00 am and didn’t succeed. I could see it with my naked eye. But the camera didn’t capture it. Removing the phone adapter to look through the eyepiece and then returning it for an image disturbed the alignment.
How I See It 