Monsoon season cloudy skies continued on Tuesday, 30 June 2015. But with storms forecast for the night, I decided to take advantage of a partly cloudy daytime sky to check out the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter, just 21'47" apart.

Open: Tuesday, 30 June 2015, 1328 MST Temperature: 111°F

Session: 843 Conditions: Partly cloudy

1337 MST: viewed Venus and Jupiter in the Meade 2" 24mm UWA eyepiece (83X) with the Meade 8" LX200-ACF telescope. There was a nice large clear area free of clouds near the zenith where the planets were located at this time in the afternoon. Both planets were easily seen in the eyepiece field-of-view (FOV). Venus was a bright slight crescent phase; Jupiter was a faint disk about the same diameter as Venus. No Jovian moons were visible against the bright blue sky.

1342 MST: viewed Venus using Celestron 12x70 binoculars. Jupiter was not visible; too faint.

I then began setting up for imaging of the conjunction. Mounted the Nikon D7200 DSLR at prime focus of the f/10 8" telescope. This (cropped) photo was taken at 1349 MST, 1/500sec, ISO 400:

I removed the D7200 and switched to a Meade 1.25" 26mm eyepiece (77X) with the Magnilux MX-1 Afocal Adapter. Both planets were still in the same FOV. This photo (full-frame) was taken with an Apple iPhone 5s at 1402 MST:

As I finished the iPhone photography, clouds covered the planets. As the cloud cover was getting more extensive I decided to close up the observatory. I'm glad I got to view the close conjunction of Venus and Jupiter through the telescope.

Close: Tuesday, 30 June 2015, 1422 MST Temperature: 100°F

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