It turns out, the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn is easily visible from our own backyard. No reason to travel to higher ground. With it being this close to the sun, it’s only optimally visible between 5:00 and 5:45pm, and then it gets too close to the horizon, when it’s darker, but it’s already dimmer due to the closeness of the horizon and the associated flickering of the air and reddening of the sky, which makes our sunsets so beautiful. But that’s not good for viewing of planetary conjunctions.

I took the following pictures right around 5:30pm, when the sky was still somewhat light, and no other stars were visible.

Yesterday, I took out the Lumix camera, put it on a tripod, set it on sky mode with a 15 second exposure, and took this picture:

Obviously, the 15 seconds are too long. The earth moves much too fast. So tonight, I just set on Intelligent Auto mode, figuring that it knows better how to do this than I, and it did:

The planets are now closer together again since yesterday. I am much happier with this picture. I am going to try this setting again tomorrow, and, of course, on the big day on Monday.