Planet Grouping Photo Page

Planet Grouping Photo Page May 2nd, 2002

This photo was taken on May 2, 2002 at 9:45pm EDT. The clouds were rolling in but the planets can still be seen in the sky.
Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Venus, Mercury with clouds

Here's Saturn, Mars, Venus and Mercury at 9:49pm EDT. Mars is now just above Tau Tauri. In the April 30th photo, Mars was below this 4th magnitude star.
4 planets

Here's a time lapsed photo showing the clouds moving in. There are 15 frames in this clip that were shot between 9:30 and 9:47 pm. So that's about one picture every minute. The brightness changes part way through because I changed the exposure from 4 seconds to 8 seconds and the image shifts because I moved the camera around a bit.
(I didn't think of making an animation until it was too late).
clouds

Photos by:
John French
Planetarium Production Coordinator
Abrams Planetarium
Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan, USA

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