I looked up into the sky and saw this pretty partial Sun halo, all day long there were beautiful high wispy cirrus clouds over the sky and at some stage I was sure a halo would appear…and it did :-)
 
Image taken on the 28th December 2020 with a Canon G7X Mark11 on manual focus and F11 aperture using ISO125.

Keep looking up…you never know what you’ll find!

This is the first time our sky has been clear since the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on the 21st December and you can see quite clearly how far both planets have now moved apart from one another on the ecliptic.
 
If you are a lover of the night sky then this was an extremely wonderful event to have witnessed, but to the naked eye for most people I think they were a little disappointed. When I explained how big these planets were and to see them just about on top of one another in our line of sight, then I think they understood that this was quite an awesome astronomical event!
 
Again I used the house across the road with all its pretty Christmas lights flashing as the foreground for my pictures of this special planetary event so I’ll never forget that it happened at Christmas-time 2020 :-)
 
The images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens on a tripod; the first image was an exposure of 2 seconds and ISO200, the second image was zoomed in to 400mm with an exposure of 1 second and ISO 640 and the image is cropped.

We have had so much cloud and rain for over two weeks now, but last night the cloud cleared just long enough to view this great conjunction between the two largest planets in our Solar System...Woohoo, I was so excited!
 
To the naked eye the planets looked like one point of light, but as soon as you magnified the view with a camera lens you could just make out the tiny separation between them.
 
I again chose my favourite house across the road to take the wide field image of the planets above their home, because it looked so pretty with all there Christmas lights on display, the children who live there will be so excited when I show them these pictures :-)
 
It would have been wonderful to have captured the event with my telescope, but it was not to be, I just had to make do with running up and down the street to find a good place to take pictures and dodging all the trees, house roofs and clouds…and I did it :-))
 
The images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens on a tripod; the first image was an exposure of 3.2 seconds and ISO400. With the second image I attached a 2x convertor to make a focal length of 1280mm with an exposure of 0.6 second and ISO1600 the image is cropped.

It’s now the beginning of summer here in Australia and the sky is still very light in the evening to at least 7.30pm. You can clearly see that the two largest planets in our solar system are now getting closer and closer together in the western sky.
 
Our neighbours across the road have just put up all there outside Christmas lights and I thought it would be a lovely idea to capture this wonderful event and make a picture with the heavenly lights also above there house…. and I did it :-)
 
In the second image below, I moved away to under the trees, the sky was so clear you could even see the tiny pinpoint lights of Jupiter’s Moon beside the planet!
 
My images taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens, exposure time for the first image was 1.6 seconds and ISO400. The second image was using the same camera setup with an exposure time of 4 seconds and ISO 500.
 
To read more about this once in 20-year event when Jupiter and Saturn will be just about on top on one another on the 21st December 2020 (As viewed from our line of sight here on Earth).
Please find some links to a couple of excellent articles below:
 
Jupiter and Saturn come together in a 'once in a lifetime' show in the December sky
ABC Science by Genelle Weule
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2020-11-27/jupiter-and-saturn-in-a-once-in-a-lifetime-grand-conjunction/12895088?nw=0
 
If you haven’t seen Jupiter and Saturn, you’re missing something!
Posted by Deborah Byrd and Bruce McClure:
https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/great-jupiter-saturn-conjunction-dec-21-2020
 
If you would like some help on taking some images please go to NASA’s link at:
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/1615/how-to-photograph-the-conjunction-of-saturn-and-jupiter/
 
Please enjoy this wonderful event :-)