Help needed :) Image Venus and the Moon for Parallax Project

[Carolyn Kennett]

I am involved in a Heritage Lottery funded project where we have been celebrating the types of historical measurements astronomers used in the past. Part of this has been a parallax project where we have been asking people each month to take an image of the crescent moon and Venus. From this, we are going to use parallax (peoples locations around the globe and the orientation of the crescent to Venus) and measure the distance to the moon, much in the way the Transit of Venus was used to measure an astronomical unit. I know a few of you took part last month and I thank you for all your excellent images. We are asking people to take part again this month for a second attempt.

So if you would like to join in and it is safe for you to do so, can you take an image of the crescent moon and Venus on Saturday night at 8pm local time on your cameras and send it to us either here or my email carolyn@hird.net or @mayescreative on social media.

I will need to know your location of where the image was taken from, but a general location is fine eg Bristol.

more information can be found out about the project here

http://www.mayescreative.com/measure-to-the-moon.html

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[James Lancashire]

I have Jan & Feb conjunction images on my mobile phone. Aiming for tonight, cloud permitting. Do you need a larger image scale e.g. DSLR?

[Carolyn Kennett]

Hi James – that’s brilliant any camera image is fine, so mobile or DSLR. thank you Carolyn

[Dominic Ford]

Here’s my effort from Cambridge. I’m afraid I took my picture a bit early… 19:09 GMT… which may screw up your experiment, but it was the last chance I had before the clouds rolled in. Nice bit of Earthshine.

[Nick James]

Mine from Chelmsford is here (attached in full res). It was taken at 19:32 since clouds were coming in. I have a less overexposed one if that helps. I do have an image at 19:52 which is the closest to 8pm I have.

[Bill Barton]

iPhone image (not sure why, but it’s been turned while uploading) from Slough caught at 20:00, didn’t think I was going to get it as it was cloudy at 18:58 when I went out.

Next (and last) opportunity, 28 April at 21:30BST.

[Jimmy Fraser]

Here is an image from Alness taken at 20.09 UT

[James Lancashire]

Brief gap in clouds last night at Sandwich, Kent. Do you want other months by email?

[Mr Jack Martin]

Here’s my effort from Rayleigh Essex, nearly 1 hour before, as Damien asks please let us know if the pics are valid for your experiment.?

Regards,

Jack

[Neil Morrison]

Hello Jane  hope this comes over correctly  Taken from Crawley West Sussex  51 deg 07′ 48″ N  0 deg 12′ 31″ W 

Time 20h 00m 01s Samyang  85mm  F1.4  1600 iso  1/100sec

[Carolyn Kennett]

Wow thank you everyone for posting here and also for emailing me your pictures. They have been wonderful to look through and will all add together to make our attempt to measure the distance to the moon using historic techniques a little more accurate. I was so pleased that so many of us had clear skies and were able to take part.

We are having a third and final run next month, on Tuesday April 28th at 9.30pm, I would love everyone to take part again and I will come on here and remind everyone again the day before. 

Once this third attempt has been run I will then report back on the individual results from each run 

thank you once again and best wishes

Carolyn

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