Starwaders

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Family Stargazing – Science Education through Astronomy www.starwaders.com – Updated 26 October 2022 Starwaders presents an evening of stargazing for one or two families at a time at a residence in Faerie Glen. Neville will not only show you interesting objects that are visible on the evening of your visit, but will also explain to you WHY you are able...

So that I never forget how close it was and so that the circumstances are recorded here in case my memory will want to exaggerate the tight timing in future:
17h30 - clouds moved in. 19h06 - not much chance (pic 1). 19h36 - a slim chance moving in from the west (pic2) . 20h03 - the first photograph taken hurriedly only minutes before the pair dropped below the observatory horizon (pic3) . 20h24 - last touch taken with smartphone (pic4).
A build-up to this event that I will always remember!

Have added last night's Jupiter position to the composite image. Also added other Galilean Moon detail.
Skies forecast to be clear on Monday evening!

It is important to know WHY you are seeing this conjunction.
This diagram shows the view of the solar system from the southern side of its disk. From this side, planets orbit CLOCKWISE. We live on Earth’s southern hemisphere, so it is better to ignore the northern hemisphere ANTI-CLOCKWISE convention and to look from the southern side.
Looking at Earth from its south pole side, it is rotating clockwise. Standing on Africa at sunset, you have just rotated away from daylight into dusk. Look along your western horizon and then up into the sky where you see Jupiter and Saturn. Notice that Saturn orbits more slowly than Jupiter does, which means that Jupiter has been catching up to Saturn, and from our Earthly point-of-view, it will be directly between us and Saturn on the 21st of December. Jupiter has been the planet closer to the horizon, but after the 21st, it Saturn will be the one closest to the horizon.

I continue capturing the closing of the gap between Jupiter and Saturn. Thursday night 17th was clouded out. So was last night 18th, but I had my telescope aimed closely at where the planets were behind the clouds, and when I caught a glimpse of them through binoculars, quickly nudged the telescope onto them and started looping through a programmed sequence of various exposure lengths and ISOs, hoping that when the pair did peep through gaps in the heavy cloud, I would capture the narrowing gap as well as the current Galilean Moon configuration. Over the next half hour a few exposures captured were good enough to include in my composite image.
So here is the progression of the conjunction in the past 4 days. Both planets and all the Moons are photographed through my telescope, but are superimposed on the underlying image. I have taken great care to ensure that the relative distances, planet sizes and positions are correct.

I set the camera going and found a few images that were taken in quick clearings between the clouds. This composite shows todays pairing, with yesterdays Jupiter top left.