Sony A7III using a 16-50mm Sony lens, f3.5, ISO 500, 10 second exposure.
I’m a huge astronomy nerd. I always thought if I wasn’t a photographer, I would be a baseball player. If I wasn’t a baseball player, I’d be working in astronomy somehow. Whether it would be looking through a telescope or strapped to the front of a test rocket is difficult to say, but I’d be there.
I’m always looking up and paying attention to the sky so when I saw that Jupiter and Saturn, the two largest bodies in our solar system, were on a path to almost eclipse one another, I had to see it. This is rare. I mean, you can see these planets with the naked eye on basically any clear night, but that’s not what’s rare. What’s rare is how close they appeared to be together from our vantage point on Earth. Jupiter, on average, is 500 million miles from Monterey Bay (where I took this photo) and Saturn a remarkable 750 million miles. The last time they appeared so close in the sky was 800 years ago! So to have these two behemoths lined up together is something special and can’t be missed.
I was aware of this well ahead of the Dec 21, 2020 conjunction and prepared. Now, how does a photographer prepare for something like this? You have to plan where to go and think about what gear you have. I knew I didn’t have a lens that was long enough to show me Jupiter and it’s moons along with the rings of Saturn and its moons, so getting a very tight shot of them wasn’t in the cards. So I had to think wider.
Because these two giant planets will still only look like specks of light, getting a wide shot with just the sky surrounding them might be interesting, but not ideal. At least for me. I do long exposure shots of the night sky all the time and appreciate them, but for this instance I wanted more context in the photo. Sometimes photos of objects in the sky can be enhanced with an object in the foreground be it a tree or some sort of structure. I wanted more than just sky and bright specks of light. So I looked for a location that, if the two largest planets in the solar system weren’t lining up together, would still be amazing.
On Dec 1, twenty days to conjunction, I went out to Monterey State Beach to catch the sunset and see the lights from Monterey turning on. It was a crystal clear evening on the bay. Jupiter and Saturn were shining brightly but not close enough together yet. After spending a little over an hour shooting, I realized that this is where I want to be on Dec 21. It was stunning. From this location you could look straight down Monterey State Beach to the Monterey Tides hotel and across the bay to Fisherman’s Wharf, Cannery Row, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and into Pacific Grove before the darkness of the Pacific ocean takes you. This would be an amazing setting to watch the two gas giants set. I just needed a clear sky.
Monterey Bay as seen on Dec 1, 2020. Jupiter and Saturn on the top left of the image well separated still. Shot with Sony A7III, Sony 16-50mm, f/5.6, ISO 200, 13 second exposure. See more central coast images here.
So now Dec 21 has finally arrived. I know where I’m going and I know what shot to set up. As luck would have it, the sky was mostly clear. Most of the time I want clouds in the sky because it adds so much more depth and texture to a photograph. If it were up to me, I would have cloudy days and clear nights year round.
I arrived at the beach right at 6:00pm and it was already quite dark. To my surprise, there were many night sky spectators already getting a glimpse of the planetary conjunction. The sky was not as clear as I had hoped, but that was fine because it was only partly cloudy and they were moving quickly, not shrouding the planets for too long. In the end, I believe the clouds actually enhance the final photo, giving more context and texture to the sky around the planets. Setting my Sony A7III up on a small concrete structure I nailed my settings and set the camera up to shoot at intervals of 20 seconds. I do this often as it allows me to not only select the best image from say, 900 photos, but I can create a timelapse as well. Then all I have to do is stand there, observe, and eat snacks.
I typically bring three cameras with me on shoots. I’ll have my Sony A7III, my Nikon D5500, and my GoPro Hero 8 Black. As the Sony is my newest toy, that’s usually my go-to. However, I use a longer lens (Sigma 18-300mm) with my D5500 and although I have a Nikon to Sony (F-mount to E-mount) lens adapter, the auto-focus sometimes lags and creates a bulky setup. So I leave the 18-300mm on the Nikon almost all the time. So on the night of the 21st when Jupiter and Saturn were doing their dance, I set up the Sony for the wide shot, zoomed all the way in with the Nikon to get closer photos, and the Hero 8 shot a wide timelapse of the whole area. That’s pretty solid coverage.
Jupter britghtest on the lower half and you can just barely make out the ring around Saturn. Shot with Nikon D5500 using 18-300mm Sigma lens, f/6.3, ISO 16,000, 1/250 sec.
GoPro Hero 8 image. f/2.8, ISO 266, 15 sec.
For the final image taken with the Sony A7III, I chose a wide open f stop to get as much light as possible. I really wanted to capture all the little lights across the bay in Monterey and Pacific Grove which adds a lot of beauty to this image. It’s one thing to see the planets set over Monterey, but to see it so alive with light makes it so much prettier. The 10 second exposure was not long enough to blow this image out and not long enough to catch the motion of the planets and stars. They still appear as points and not streaks. However, it is long enough to see motion in the clouds and the ocean. I really like that soft look that long exposure photography creates. Almost looks like the ocean and clouds were painted.
Lastly, because this shot is so wide, you cannot really tell that there are two planets in this shot but that’s kind of the point. They are supposed to look like one giant star and I think this image captures that. It was a true once in a lifetime event.
If you like these images and want to see more of my work, click here!
Final Sony A7III image with Lightroom touch up.
