Crescent Moon, Venus, Jupiter and Pleiades - 26th March

[ejwwest]

Taken in Chandlers Ford, Hampshire:

Moon, Venus, Jupiter and Pleiades by ejwwest, on Flickr

Taken with 50mm f1.4 lens on Canon 40D

[starman1969]

Good pic. Earthshine on the moon looks great.

[Jaffa007]

Nice Mine don't look anything like this lol

[ejwwest]

Nice Mine don't look anything like this lol

There are several challenges. The first being the dynamic range: to ensure stars are visible means the moon is way overexposed, though that often means the earthshine then shows up (as here). If the moon is properly exposed, stars and even the planets are underexposed or not even visible.

Next problem is the speed of the lens. Most lenses at f4-f5.6 would need exposures of several seconds, possibly leading to star trailing.

Then there's the focal length of the lens. The wider angle lenses would fit more of the background in which might have some aesthetic appeal. A telephoto (above prime lens) wouldn't show all the field up.

In the end I went for my 50mm f1.4 lens as the field of view contained what I wanted and I could get sub-second exposures. I tried various exposures from 1/200 to 1/2 second and chose the one that looked best. I daresay I could try a HDR stack.