The Moon and Pleiades (7th January)

[Andrew*]

Got in a bit late, and the Pleiades were just too far from the moon to fit all of both on the chip. This meant missing out three of the sisters...

I decided to take this opportunity to do a coloured moon shot as well.

(click to enlarge)

Here's it without the saturation.

(click to enlarge)

Scope: ED80

Camera: Sony A-300 DSLR at prime focus

Exposures: single 1/400 sec for the moon, single 1.6 sec for the stars

Processing: combined and coloured in Photoshop. Thanks to MartinB and Filipe Alves for the processing tutorials!

Andrew

[Jeff RV]

Great result Andrew, I like the colour shot, very nice!!

Jeff.

[barkis]

Nicely done Andrew. I like the coloured version also.

Ron.

[Psychobilly]

Cracking shots Andrew....

Think i'll revist mine later and not go for the Nebulous background as it looks too false whereas this looks almost believable if you know what i mean....

I managed to get almost all of the event... couldn't get any stars in the first contact images as the sky background was just too bright but took sequences every few minutes until last contact...

I really like the combination with the coloured moon... and your moon is much sharper than mine...

Billy...

[Andrew*]

Thanks guys - glad you like the colour one. Thought I might have overdone it a bit. That or it wasn't the right pic to do it on...

Anyway, look forward to seeing yours Peter. Are you going to do an animation as well?

Re: the nebulous background - did you use old data for that or did you manage to pick up nebulosity there and then?? Because I couldn't go above 5 sec because everything just went white from the moon.

Andrew

[Psychobilly]

I Dunno about an animation as i decided to rotate the camera part way through for better framing.... I took shots from 1/500 to 6s at each stage in 1 stop increments... also got some passing cloud around the best part as the moon was sitting in amongst the sisters.. that did look very nice through the 8" seeing the stars emerge from behind luna...(hang on ain't that a visual observation........ oh no.........)

Billy...