shot Saturn and Jupiter (Bradford)

These kind of nights are going to get rare over the next couple of months. When I saw the Clear Sky Alarm Clock email alert for Fingal and then Toronto, I readied for an evening shoot.

Before sundown, I set up the Mamiya tripod, barn door tracker with fresh battery, polar aligned, mounted Canon 40D with grip and fresh dual batteries. Set the Vivitar 70-210 old glass near 180 and f/4. Set the body to manual mode, RAW, ISO 800, 10 second delay, f/3.5, and to take in-camera darks.

Took a bunch of test shots to aim and focus and adjust the histogram. The sky darkened. The final round of shots were 4 seconds.

Canon DPP, slight white balance adjustment, slight adjustments to contrast and brightness, curves, cropped a little bit.

Jupiter, bottom-right, is showing some moons. Ganymede is at the four o'clock position. Barely visible between Ganymede and Jupiter is Europa. At the 10 o'clock spot, about 2 to 3 times the distance, is Callisto. It curious how much brighter Ganymede is.

At the 3 o'clock position from Saturn, little Titan is visible.

Magnitude 9.5 stars show in this 4 second shot. The brightest star is at the right edge of the field: that's 56 Sagittarii.

Saturn is 1¼° from the Capricornus border.

Conditions: -1°C, feels like -4, WSW wind at 13 km/h, 1017.3 mb, 80%.