A sextuplet conjunction

Having missed the first round of closest conjunction between Jupiter and Mars yesterday morning through tiredness, I made it a point to wake up at 5.30am today just to set myself up to photograph these two planets together. What I wanted to achieve was to capture an image that included the four moons of Jupiter. What a sight that would be, wouldn't it, to have two planets and four moons together, right? 

Timing, weather, equipment and luck play important parts in this endeavour. The timing was right in this instance because I was sure that Jupiter's moon would be visible in the pictures, if my luck held. I was less confident with the weather although the forecast did not say rain in the morning. Clouds could come rolling in unannounced. I was even less sure with my equipment: the Olympus E-PL7. Sometimes, it performs superbly within limitations, and sometimes, it does not. And finally, luck. If you are not lucky, well, that's it. 

My first batch of images were, unfortunately, not good enough, despite mounting the camera on a tripod. I couldn't see the moons. It was not until my third batch of pictures that I managed to have two reasonably good frames to show off. Only two frames from 68 taken! Here is the better one, but it is still not as good as I had hoped for. Anyway, the moment has passed.

The four Galilean moons are, in order from the top, Callisto, Ganymede, Io and Europa. My last word on this conjunction is that seen with the naked eye - at least, with my own eyes - the two planets looked like one. They were so close together that to my bad eyesight, they looked like one merged point of light. But of course, the camera images tell a different story.