I observed early this morning the dazzling duo
From my log.
[Observed 0520-0625 EDT/0920-1025 UT. Sunrise 0611 EDT/1011 UT. Spectacular dazzling duo of Venus and Jupiter in Pisces this morning – WoW! Venus 67.42% illuminated; Jupiter 99.53% illuminated. Stellarium 0.22.1 angle mode shows separated by just less than 30 arcminutes (29 arcminute, 47 arcsecond at 0545 EDT). By 0605 EDT and shortly after, the 3 Galilean moons visible in the telescope view faded as the sky brightened approaching sunrise. At 0621 EDT, I could see the Sun ascending in its glory behind a distant tree line, Venus visible naked eye. In the telescope view, Venus gibbous shape and Jupiter planetary disk visible still. Earlier at Jupiter I could see the two main cloud belts (NEB and SEB) and 3 Galilean moons visible (Ganymede, Io, and Callisto). I used my 90-mm refractor telescope with Orion Sirius 25-mm plossl for 40x views. True FOV ~ 78 arcminutes, resolution ~ 7.5 arcsecond. Venus disk size ~ 17 arcsecond, Jupiter ~ 35 arcsecond. Good observing location at my neighbor’s 50-acre horse and hay farm standing in a large field. Great horn owls were in the woods hooting, I hooted back. We had a hoot of a time
Skies clear, some thin cirrus scattered that did not cause problems, temperature 4C, winds north/4 knots. At 0520 EDT, Venus and Jupiter were the Wow view, dazzling duo, forget about Mars and Saturn
Venus apparent magnitude -4.11, Jupiter -2.11, Venus about 6.3x brighter than Jupiter.]
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