Back in January last year I managed to get a photograph of Neptune, a planet I’ve long harboured a soft spot for. This month, Neptune has been nicely placed close to Mars in the south after dark. Having a new telescope I’d planed to get a better image, and perhaps work on imaging all the planets in reverse order.
Several nights ago, the sky was perfectly clear, so I started setting up the telescope. Almost immediately, the clouds started rolling in. Giving up on the telescope idea, I reached for the camera and tripod and just snapped a few frames at 300 mm focal length.
It’s not the most stunning photo of a planet you’ll ever see, but I think it’s a bit more convincing than my previous attempt. You can almost see some blue-green colour to the tiny dot in the image.
Uranus is inconveniently placed close to the waxing moon for the next week or so, meaning it’ll be a while yet until I get the next planet in my solar system family portrait.