Parade of the Planets

The Parade of Planets

The next few weeks have an amazing opportunity and I’ve been delighted pointing out the planets that I’m photographing to curious passersby. They’ve heard about this ‘planets lining up’ thing, but really the Parade of Planets is more of a long arc covering a good 120º of sky. In the west is bright Venus, with a very faint Saturn below it. To the south is Jupiter, sitting above the constellation of Orion. Orion’s belts is an easy sight to find in the winter sky. To the east is Mars, it’s red shimmer noticeable below the white pinpoints of Castor and Pollux in Gemini. Uranus and Neptune require a telescope while Mercury is only visible right at sunset.

This photo is a 9 image panorama using the Fujifilm X-T5 with the Viltrox 13mm f1.f AF for Fuji. Normally I’d also use my K&F Concept Light Pollution filter, but it’s moved between bags and I need to find it again. It makes a huge difference. Basic editing and merging was done with Lightroom Classic. Sometimes I’ll enhance the brighter stars and planets so they look as they do to the eye, but not this time.

The section of sky with Orion, Mars and Jupiter is probably the most interesting one currently. There’s just a lot to see there. The Orion Nebula, Pleiades, the Crab Nebula, even the asterism known as the Winter triangle, between Betelguese in Orion, Sirius (the brightest star in the sky) in Canis Major, and Procyon in Canis Minor. The Milky Way even runs through here-but it’s the tails, so fainter and less detailed.

The area around Orion.

Of course in the west of Ireland clouds are an inevitable thing. As I walked to Blackrock to get the shot, the cloud rolled in to spoil play. The planets were still bright enough to shine through.

Planets and stars peek through the clouds at Blackrock

Even then there’s plenty of detail to be captured. Here’s Venus and Saturn over Galway Cathedral.

The final image of this set is from the same shoot as the first. A bench at Ballyloughane with Mars and Jupiter above it.

It’s become obvious that the machinations and algorithms of social media have no care for us or our relationships. All they want are your eyeballs looking at more ads. They’ll serve whatever rubbish it takes. When you post more they penalise you. Your best content gets no views and random things get loads. The result? I think it’s time to blog more here. At least here this is my space, and it’s not lost in mere moments.