Mighty Mars

With the planet Mars approaching a once-in-a-couple of decades close encounter with Earth in late July, it was time to get out there early and capture some images. In this case, one had to rise very early to effectively see it. Mars (magnitude -1.72) at this time outshines the brightest star in the sky, Sirius. The above image looks toward Mars in the SSE sky from a seemingly barren landscape, which is actually a hillock of dirt in the Bowman Meadows housing development in Marion, Iowa. All images in this posting were captured with a Nikon D7200 DSLR camera with a Nikkor AF-S 35mm 1:1.8G lens. This image, captured at 3:23 am CDT on Sunday, June 17, 2018, is an 8 second exposure at f/5.6, ISO 1000. The foreground is illuminated both by the street lights behind me and my cell phone flashlight.

3:25 am and closer to the hillock. Same settings as the top image.

3:30 am. 6 second exposure at f/2.5, 200 ISO. Mars currently resides in the constellation Capricornus.

While I was out there, I also captured the 0.07 magnitude planet Saturn (bright object), which is approaching opposition later this month. I was hoping to capture even a small bit of the Milky Way's galactic core--which should be just right of the planet--but light pollution (below) from the city of Marion completely washed it out. This image looks SSW at 3:26 am. Settings identical to the first two Mars images.