Moon and Jupiter

[wfooshee]

We had an incredibly clear sky last night, very unusual considering the normal level of humidity, and the fact that at sea level there's a damn lot of air between us and the stars. This night, though, was clear enough that the naked eye could discern colors in the stars, even without going way out into the countryside.

Jupiter is the bright "star" just to the left of the moon, and Orion is seen over to the right.


Just the moon and Jupiter. I made two copies of the same frame, one with Jupiter visible but the moon blown out, and one with the moon good but no Jupiter. Simple copy/paste composite. Technically it's from the same camera image, so it's not cheating!


The moon alone, 1-to-1 crop at 300mm zoom


Orion, 1 second at f:5.6, ISO 400


This is the same camera file as the Orion image above, but with levels boosted just about all the way up.

[mattb]

Nice working getting out there to shoot the night sky!
For the Orion shot, what ISO did you use? Looks like it could use a little more sensitivity for more stars if you have the headroom.

[wfooshee]

ISO 400, but I fiddled it in PS to get a certain number of the stars, it's probably dimmer than the camera shot. The last image was actually the same frame, boosted beyond reason.

I made a GIF that alternates between the shots, but Picasaweb "processes" it on upload and screws it up; one frame is black and the other is noise. I tried to attach the GIF here, it became a JPG and now I can't delete it. How do you delete an attachment from a post?

[ybsorc]

Great Moon shots, I wish I were more successful at getting shots like these!