I've seen some stars tonight. What could I possibly have been looking at with these pictures? The weather tonight here is great and I decided to shoot some hand-held (too bad I don't have any tripod) night mode pictures shot with P10. I have no experience in stars observation therefore I can't tell what was I looking at. But I'd definitely love to know what are those. Forgive me if the quality of pictures are bad; I've tried my best. At some point I found some of the stars look clear on my phone but fainter over my laptop monitor.

Picture 1 - Taken under hand-held night mode: ISO/400 S/0.5s F/2.2

Picture 2 - Taken under hand-held night mode: ISO/800 S/0.5s F/2.2


Latitude, Longitude &amp; Compass details: Right is for P1; left belongs to P2. Keep in mind that it may not 100% accurate.

Time: 22 Dec 2018 / 22:52 P.M. UTC+8
Location: Ampang, Malaysia.


Star labelled 4 is the only brightest among the others. It shines and flickers so bright that visible very well with naked eyes. The rest are barely to be seen if not focus well.
in-the-sky.org planetarium mode is your friend. It will pick up your location and time zone from your ip address, but you can manually set it to anywhere else.

I've added screenshots at both 20:52 where the Moon is about 26 degrees above the horizon, and at the stated time of22:52 where the Moon is more like 53 degrees.

20:52:



22:52:





Here's a plot of altitude and azimuth of the Moon on that night. Python script as well.



import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from skyfield.api import Topos, load, Loader

halfpi, pi, twopi = [f*np.pi for f in (0.5, 1, 2)]
degs, rads = 180/pi, pi/180

load = Loader('~/Documents/fishing/SkyData')  # avoids multiple copies of large files


data    = load('de421.bsp')
earth   = data['earth']
moon    = data['moon']
ts      = load.timescale()

print earth.at(ts.now()).position.km   # for no reason at all

local_hours = np.linspace(18, 24, 13)
UTC_hours   = [h-8 for h in local_hours]
times       = ts.utc(2018, 12, 22, UTC_hours, 0, 0)

KL     = earth + Topos(3.1333, 101.6833, elevation_m=66)
Ampang = earth + Topos(3.1255, 101.7588, elevation_m=66)

alt, az, dist = KL.at(times).observe(moon).apparent().altaz()
KLalt, KLaz   = alt.degrees, az.degrees

alt, az, dist        = Ampang.at(times).observe(moon).apparent().altaz()
Ampangalt, Ampangaz  = alt.degrees, az.degrees

if True:
    plt.figure()

    pts = [6, 8, 10]

    plt.suptitle('Moon  22-Dec-2018 KL &amp; Ampang', fontsize=16)

    plt.subplot(4, 1, 1)
    plt.plot(local_hours, KLalt)
    plt.plot(local_hours, Ampangalt)
    plt.plot(local_hours[pts], Ampangalt[pts], 'ok')
    plt.ylabel('Altitude (degs)', fontsize=16)
    plt.xlabel('hours (local)', fontsize=16)
    plt.ylim(0, 90)

    plt.subplot(4, 1, 2)
    plt.plot(local_hours, KLaz)
    plt.plot(local_hours[pts], Ampangaz[pts], 'ok')
    plt.ylabel('Azimuth (degs)', fontsize=16)
    plt.xlabel('hours (local)', fontsize=16)
    plt.ylim(0, 90)

    plt.subplot(2, 1, 2)
    r = (1. - Ampangalt/90.)
    r[r&gt;1] = np.nan
    theta = rads*Ampangaz
    x, y = r*np.sin(theta), r*np.cos(theta)
    plt.plot(x, y)
    plt.plot(x[pts], y[pts], 'ok')
    th = np.linspace(0, twopi, 361)
    xc, yc = np.sin(th), np.cos(th)
    plt.plot(xc, yc, '-k', linewidth=2)
    d = 0.05
    plt.plot([-d, d], [ 0, 0], '-k')
    plt.plot([ 0, 0], [-d, d], '-k')
    plt.xlim(-1.1, 1.1)
    plt.ylim(-1.1, 1.1)

    plt.show()