A comet? a Planet? I saw something last night

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

Originally posted by lbndhr
If you are looking at the Texas map find DelRio on the border 150 miles south of san Antonio. I am at the west end of lake amestad, I was facing Sonora of highway 277. The time was inberween 9:00 and 9:30. I did do the 8 x zoom on all the pics. I do have a few pics I took from my phone this object from my phones view looks like a star. When I camera zoomed it I saw a planet.

Del Rio is West of San Antonio, not south, it's south of Sonora.

Anyway here's the view at 9:30 last night from Del Rio. Jupiter was visible to the east, as a bright planet. You can see about how high it was, but you need to scroll to the right to see it.

There was also a bright star, Capella, to the Northeast.

edit on 4-10-2011 by Arbitrageur because: clarification

Del Rio is actually south south-west of san Antonio. Anyhow I think your correct on what I saw the stars around it are how I saw it. What I don't understand now is, how after all these months nearly a year of ylthe same view every night how this suddenly appeared in plain site. I have a nightly ritual and last night it was completely new and different. Night before i did not see it.

Originally posted by lbndhr
Del Rio is actually south south-west of san Antonio. Anyhow I think your correct on what I saw the stars around it are how I saw it.

You call this south southwest? A is San Antonio and B is Del Rio:


It sure looks west to me. Straight west would be 270 degrees. Maybe it's 269 degrees, but I don't see how you get south out of that map at all, it's very close to due West.

What I don't understand now is, how after all these months nearly a year of ylthe same view every night how this suddenly appeared in plain site. I have a nightly ritual and last night it was completely new and different. Night before i did not see it.

Maybe there were a few clouds the night before?

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

Originally posted by lbndhr
Del Rio is actually south south-west of san Antonio. Anyhow I think your correct on what I saw the stars around it are how I saw it.

You call this south southwest? A is San Antonio and B is Del Rio:

It sure looks west to me. Straight west would be 270 degrees. Maybe it's 269 degrees, but I don't see how you get south out of that map at all, it's very close to due West.

What I don't understand now is, how after all these months nearly a year of ylthe same view every night how this suddenly appeared in plain site. I have a nightly ritual and last night it was completely new and different. Night before i did not see it.

Maybe there were a few clouds the night before?

Maybe there were clouds, clouds-rain have become rare around here I don't remember the sly being blurred due to clouds in over 2 weeks or longer, but again I may be wrong.
Regardless I will be better prepared tonight and hopefully get better pics.

Originally posted by lbndhr
Regardless I will be better prepared tonight and hopefully get better pics.

Unless you have a telescope to mount your camera to, you're not prepared to take pictures of a planet.

howto.wired.com...

if you want to photograph the moon or planets, you'll need to mount your camera to a telescope.

If you really want to get pictures of a planet that look like a planet, you'll need to follow the instructions in that link carefully.

But even if you use a tripod and get it in focus, all your photo will show without a telescope, is just a dot, and a planet dot doesn't look any different from a star dot in a dot photo. A dot in a photo isn't particularly interesting, so don't get your hopes up even if you do everything right.