Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Below is a shot of the Jupiter Saturn conjunction at its closest point (Dec 21st ~ 5:45pm PST). This image was made by taking 4K video of the event at different exposures and stacking the images to help remove atmospheric turbulence. Different exposures where used to correct for the large difference in brightness of Jupiter, Saturn and their respective moons. These different images where then composited together for the final image. Note: this is the same technique I used on the images I downloaded the other day when the planets where farther apart, however since the planets where closer together, the image has been cropped to enlarge the planets. Note: Jupiter's moon Ganymede was in front of the planet at the time these images where taken (download to more easily see the moons).

All questions, comments and suggestions are welcome.

Conjunction at its closest point.

(Download)

Conjunction with moons labeled

(Download)

blue-ultra Loc: New Hampshire

Outstanding, thank you for sharing...

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi blue-ultra
Thanks for checking out the conjunction image and for the comment.

Murray Loc: New Westminster

Very well done!

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi Murray
Thanks for checking out the conjunction picture and for the comment.

RPaul3rd Loc: Arlington VA and Sarasota FL

Outstanding images and artwork. Would you care to share how your expertise? I thought mine was pretty good. It was the same quality as done at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. But yours is truly amazing. This is mine below.

fjdarling Loc: Mesa, Arizona, USA

Outstanding shot. Thanks for sharing it!

Barn Owl

Ballard, Thanks for your excellent documentations and willingness to post it for UHHs to see. The labels completed your masterpiece.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi RPaul3rd
Thanks for checking out the conjunction image and for the comment. To make this image I took a couple of 4K videos (each 60 seconds long) using a canon 5Dmark IV DSLR. The images where taken at F10 with a 4096mm focal length. The ISO was set to 800, one video was taken at 1/200 sec per frame to expose Jupiter correctly, one was taken at 1/30 second to expose Saturn correctly. I also took several stills between 1 and 10 seconds to capture Saturn's moons, (the video for Saturn gave a decent image of Jupiter's moons). With this data I stacked the video images one for Jupiter and the one for Saturn (I then removed the over exposed Jupiter from the stacked Saturn image (left a faint outline of Jupiter for image registration later). To stack the images I converted the .mov file to a bunch of .tif files that where then passed to Autostakkert which is a freeware stacking program. Once the images where stacked I used pixinsight to sharpen the images with an un-sharp mask and balance the light and color with the curves transformation. To composite these Images I use the canon utility Digital Photo Professional that came with the camera. Next I created a mask to capture Saturn's moons from the highly overexposed still shots. Note: I used the 2 second and the 10 second exposure for the captures and subsequent composite of just the moons. The reason for the 2 different exposures is that Tethys was buried in the glare of Saturn in the 10 second exposure but required to capture Enceladus. I then composited in Saturn's moons into the final image. On all the images I used Registax6 to do a minor shift of the red and blue channels to compensate for the atmosphere dispersion that acts like a prism when the planets are this low on the horizon.
A small amount of brightness adjustment was done to the final composite image.

I've included some of the intermediate images below.

Stacked version of Jupiter note, Saturn and Jupiter's moons are faintly visible (this is in the original video aspect ratio)

(Download)

Stacked version of Saturn with Jupiter only left in as a dim outline

(Download)

2 second still (you'll need to zoom in to see most of Saturn's moons)

(Download)

10 second and highly sharpened image to capture Enceladus (note: Tethys is completely buried in the glare)

(Download)

Saturn's moons from masked off versions of the above files

(Download)

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi fjdarling
Thanks for checking out the conjunction image and for the comment. I enjoy sharing the images.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi Barn Owl
Thanks for checking out the image of the conjunction and for the comment. I enjoy sharing the images.

ChackbayGuy Loc: South Louisiana

Obviously a lot of work went into these images. Thank you for that and for sharing a fantastic set!
Wouldn't it be nice to be 880 million km closer and use a 50mm lens???? Sure enjoyed looking. My tries were all hand held to prove that wasn't the way to do it! Thanks... John

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi ChackbayGuy
Thanks for checking out the conjunction images and for the comment. I do enjoying sharing what I have worked on. You could certainly get a better shot of Jupiter being 880 million km closer (around 7 km this side of Jupiter
) but Saturn would still be pretty small in a 50mm lens ( at ~750 million km away).

Delderby Loc: Derby UK

Congratulations - superb picture - superb presentation.

Cotondog Loc: Saskatchewan, Canada

Amazing photo. The clarity of these two planets and their moons is outstanding!