No Sign of Triple Conjunction Here

Saturday, January 9 and Sunday, January 10 were to be optimum evenings just after sunset to view a rare Jupiter-Saturn-Mercury planetary conjunction, low in the southwest sky. Unfortunately for me, both evenings were clouded-over. On the evening of Monday, January 11, 2021, skies were mostly clear (except for scattered clouds on the horizon where the planets would most likely be), and I made one last attempt at a conjunction observation. Naked eye, binoculars and long camera exposures, however, would produce nothing. The above image of the evening's sunset was my lone consolation. Tinkling of tiny ice shards slid downslope with each step I took in the snow, and air temperatures were 35 degrees F with winds out of the southwest at 10-15 mph. Image looks west toward Alburnett Road in the Bowman Meadows housing development of Marion, Iowa. It is a 2 second exposure at f/6.3, ISO 125 and 22mm focal length. Nikon D7200 DSLR camera.