Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Planets on the Move Oct. 17-26

This picture represents much loss of sleep in the interests of science.  ha-ha.
We see Venus, Jupiter and Mars changing position between Saturday, October 17 and Monday, October 26.
Venus is at the top of the image and slowly moves down (to the East) day by day.
Jupiter starts out just below Mars and moves slightly up (West)  Actually, Jupiter doesn't move very much at all with respect to the fixed background stars.
Mars starts out just above Jupiter and slowly drops down (East).
You can't see the background stars in this composite image, but I used them to make sure that each frame was registered correctly relative to the other frames.  So the changing positions of the planets are real.  Venus and Mars really were moving eastward relative to Jupiter and the background stars, which made Jupiter look like it was moving up from Mars to Venus.
Venus will be down by Mars by the end of this week.
I'm not sure how well the planets will show up on a Web browser, but if figure it is worth a try.  The image is 1920 pixels wide, so if you have a 1920x1080 monitor, and click on this thumbnail, you might be in luck.  I'll have a look with a few different computers to get an idea of how this is working.

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