I thought I’d share a shot that was originally destined for the recycle bin, but after some tweaking in Photoshop I decided to save this uninspired picture from such a grim fate.
While it’s not the most eye-poping picture ever taken, there is something about it that has grown on me. Perhaps it’s the element of dynamism - the blurred streak of the clouds whisking across the sky as the stars rise. Taken at the start of October, the constellation Auriga can be seen over the eastern horizon right in the centre of the picture. The G class star Capella can also be seen shining brightly in the centre of the frame. It wasn’t a cloud free night as can be seen in the photograph - I was eventually forced to take a brief pause in my session before I could continue shooting again. The picture was taken at ISO 800 using a 30 second exposure with an F/Stop of 4.5 and a focal length of 26mm.
Tags: Auriga, Capella, DSLR, Photoshop
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A huge vapid bank of cloud ambled over the sky early on Wednesday (15.10.08) morning and presented me with a chance to shoot the washed out lunar corona. Am I becoming obsessed? The first shot was taken at 70mm using an F/Stop of 8 with an ISO of 100. The second image is my favourite - It was shot at 18mm with an F/Stop of 5.6 again at ISO 100. The last shot like the first one was also taken using an F/Stop of 8 at 70mm and ISO 100. Using a lower ISO has definitely imparted a smooth quality to these shots which makes them all the nicer. I am going to stop taking pictures of the moon . . . I promise.
Tags: DSLR, Lunar Corona, Moon, Weather
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Following Saturday evening’s short lunar imaging endeavor I found that I had become quite absorbed with moon halos and coronas. The corona is caused when clouds drift in front of the moon. Water droplets in these clouds diffract the light which in turn creates a bright disc and faint coloured rings that surround the moon. Halos on the other hand are caused by cirro-stratus clouds high in the Earth’s atmosphere. Small ice crystals in these thin clouds bend the light at an angle of 22° which in turn creates a large ring around the moon.
Monday evening presented me with reasonable conditions to go out ‘corona hunting’. Normally I would be moaning about clouds and low sky transparency, but on this occasion I couldn’t get enough of it. After a fair amount of experimentation I took the shot above using an exposure of 15 seconds at 40mm with the white balance set to daylight and an F/Stop of 8. On reflection I probably should have stopped up another stop or two, however the picture still turned out quite nice and only needed some minor processing in Photoshop. All I need now are some nice thin cirro-stratus clouds to pass my way!
Tags: DSLR, Lunar Corona, Moon, Weather
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The moon was out in force last night (11.10.08) which put paid to half of my DSO search list, but more about that in a moment. I spent the first half of the evening imaging the moon. I wasn’t trying to go for a classic lunar shot per se but a more scenic image of the moon as it passed through the trees at the front of the house. I had the foresight to take a dark frame, but I think that there is still some noise in there that could be processed out. I had taken a number of pictures at F/Stops between 5.6, 8 and 11 as well as shutter speeds between 1/400 and 2 seconds. Best of a bad bunch, the overexposed image above was shot using an F/Stop of 8 at 70mm and an ISO of 400 with a shutter speed of 1/400. A lower ISO and bracketing might be the order of the day next time around. All in all, it’s still a nice image, but the thing that I like about this shot is the fact that I managed (unwittingly I might add) to capture a ‘corona’ around the moon albeit a mild one.
By early Sunday morning I turned my attention to the DSO search. First up was The North America Nebula NGC 7000, The Pelican Nebula IC 5070 and the Veil Nebula NGC 6960, 6992 and 6995 in Cygnus as well as M56 and M57 in Lyra - then I realised that I had zero chance of seeing anything in this part of the sky as the moon was now shinning low in the west.
I turned eastwards determined to carry on my DSO hunt in spite of the moon. Here I was looking for M36, M37 and M38 in the constellation Auriga. These open clusters are really something special - at 25 million years old, M36 is the youngest of the group. Lying 4,100 light years from the Earth, the stars here cover an area of around 14 light years. With a distance of up to 4,600 light years, M37 looks to be the oldest of the group with an age of 300 million years. This cluster contains over 500 stars with at least a dozen of them red giants. At around 220 million years, M38 is the second oldest of the group and lies 4,200 light years away spanning at least 25 light years. As views go, this is a fantastic part of the sky and one I’ll be returning to a lot more in the future.
Traveling south eastwards, I pointed my 25×100 binoculars at what is probably the most famous nebula in the night sky - M42/M43. Otherwise known as the Orion Nebula. This is a spectacular object to observe, and even under my light polluted sky the nebula was visible with the naked eye. Through the 25×100s M42/M43 showed up as a pale blue smear against the night. The nebula covers an area of around 24 light years and is generally considered to be the closest area of mass star formation to Earth. A really wondrous sight.
Last on my list was Collinder 50 i.e. The Hyades in Taurus. This is the nearest open cluster to Earth lying only 151 light years away and containing 300 to 400 stars that all share a commonality. This part of the sky really is best viewed through a pair of 10×50 binoculars so you can savor the cluster in it’s entirety.
By about 02:30 UT I decided to call it quits. Having spent most of Saturday daytime not feeling too well I decided that discretion really was the better part of valor.
Tags: Auriga, Bresser 10x50, Collinder 50, Cygnus, De Mairan's Nebula, DSLR, IC 5070, Lunar Corona, Lyra, M36, M37, M38, M42, M43, M56, M57, Moon, NGC 6960/6992/6995, NGC 7000, Orion, Strathspey 25x100, The Hyades, The North America Nebula, The Orion Nebula, The Pelican Nebula, The Veil Nebula
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