[Theme] Show us your best moon (and solar system) images

[Akira]

Very nice Akira, what time was it in japan ? over here it hapened at about 3AM and I did not get up

Thank you, Armando.  The moon was the most eclipsed at 6:02 PM in Japan.

[golunvolo]

Very, very nice series Akira.

  Thanks for sharing it!

[fish_shooter]

...and I managed to capture the almost-total eclipse.

Interesting, the uneclipsed part was more to the bottom from Alaska. It was 1 degrees F or -17 C measured at the airport. It was somewhat hazy which I suppose was from water vapor coming from heating related combustion. It made the moon not as sharp as I have been able to get from the lens I used - the old manual focus 400mm f/2.8 Nikkor. A few stars can be seen. There was highlight clipping that I did not completely remove in PP.

[Akira]

Interesting, the uneclipsed part was more to the bottom from Alaska. It was 1 degrees F or -17 C measured at the airport. It was somewhat hazy which I suppose was from water vapor coming from heating related combustion. It made the moon not as sharp as I have been able to get from the lens I used - the old manual focus 400mm f/2.8 Nikkor. A few stars can be seen. There was highlight clipping that I did not completely remove in PP.

The viewed angle of the moon disc will change according to the latitude.  I used an old Ai Nikkor 200/4.0 on SIGMA fp both for the cityscapes and the closeup.  I doubled the resolution for the crop of the almost-totally-eclipsed moon utilizing the "enhance" function in ACR.

[fish_shooter]

Good use of the supersize function! So far I have only used it for underwater pix. A Facebook friend of mine in Hawaii posted a more complete eclipse from there.

[Akira]

Good use of the supersize function! So far I have only used it for underwater pix. A Facebook friend of mine in Hawaii posted a more complete eclipse from there.

Thank you, Tom.  I've found the enhance function works pretty well with the planet images.

[Øivind Tøien]

Glad you got to experience the eclipse Akira and Tom and great effort, the different orientation of the maximum phase is of course differences in tilt when the moon is seen at different latitudes (together with camera orientation).

Temperature dropped towards -30°C here in Fairbanks during my capture, but everything worked and I had a really good time with surprisingly good seeing in spite of the forecasts. I found a spot with clear view to both the eclipse and Polaris in the driveway for a few cabins around here, and set up my tracker. Luckily no one arrived to park so I remained undisturbed. I always use manual daylight white balance for astro work, and in the case of lunar eclipses it is quite important - otherwise the white-balancing will try to remove the warm tint from the shady moon part.

I knew the Pleiades  were going to be close by so that was one of my side targets, trying both a mosaic with the 300mm f/4 PF (not sure how that went or if I even got stitchable frames, not processed yet) and the 105mm f/2.5 (stopped down to f/4.5) to get it all in view. I probably tilted a bit to get them both in view. I had to accept blowing out a bit more than desirable to maker the Pleiades barely visible in the upper left corner.
#1



Then I used the 300mm f/4 PF with TC-20E III to get a closeup. With the tracker it was no problem to expose for 15 seconds or more at 600mm focal length (this one at 5 sec near maximal eclipse. All eclipse images were captured at ISO 100 except those where I wanted to capture some stars, and accepting to blow out the moon).
#2



Sunlight starting to come back again.
#3



I like the way just a little of the "dark side" showed up at the top only in this one:
#4



When the eclipse was over I found the full moon very bright to look at compared to this experience.

At the end I tried some 60 sec exposure of the Pleiades while I had everything set up, still at 600mm focal length, and 6 out of 12 frames were usable. Not bad at that focal length although more frames would have to be stacked for acceptable noise levels, but it was getting late and targets were disappearing behind trees from the location of the setup.
#5

[Akira]

Thank you, Øivind.  As there have always been at least very thin clouds here in Tokyo and the atmosphere was himid, I couldn't get the perfectly clear view of the moon.  But I think I could capture the cityscape images as I had intended for the given situation.

As always, your setup seems to be really capable.  Even though the Pleiades shot might not satisfy your high standard, the image looks breathtaking to me.  Thank you for sharing.

[Bruno Schroder]

Impressive series, Akira and Øivind

[Akira]

Impressive series, Akira and Øivind

Thank you, Bruno!

[Øivind Tøien]

Thank you, Øivind.  As there have always been at least very thin clouds here in Tokyo and the atmosphere was himid, I couldn't get the perfectly clear view of the moon.  But I think I could capture the cityscape images as I had intended for the given situation.

As always, your setup seems to be really capable.  Even though the Pleiades shot might not satisfy your high standard, the image looks breathtaking to me.  Thank you for sharing.

Thanks Bruno and Akira. I brought the background down a bit more and applied a little more aggressive NR shortly after I wrote my comment and updated the image so it made it a bit more acceptable. And considering it was aimed just 15° away from the brightening moon and only 6 images stacked I should not complain much. The autostitching of the mosaic did not work, I probably need more exposure on the stars. A future project could be to image the area without moon to create a brighter mosaic and composite the moon back in based on the current map I created during the eclipse.

[ColinM]

I remain in awe at the ingenuity and dedication of fellow members here.

In the last 5 days, I've seen two beautiful moonscapes - each time from a car
Last week, I was driving and saw the almost full moon illuminating a repeating pattern of cloud fragments, almost like a chessboard against a sky that still had traces of blue in it.
Could I find a place to stop & capture it on my phone?  No

Last night I was the passenger.
After a lot of nagging I persuaded the driver to pull over, with the family ranting how we needed to get home
On the plus side, I did have my D500 & 300mm PF.
On the downside, I paid attention to their nagging and didn't take time to compose or make better use of a nearby wall to support. My 180 or 105 lens & a tripod would have really allowed me to capture a landscape scattered with jewel-like street & houselights, with the moon reigning supreme over it.
Oh yes, if I'd arrived 20 minutes earlier, I'd have caught the moon more freshly risen.....

So I now appreciate even more the planning, waiting and maybe "empty" nights that some of you have gone through to post what you do

[Øivind Tøien]

The moon is nice and sharp and good story to go with it. I know the feeling having to pass opportunities for captures either because others are not interested or for instance one has to get to work for a meeting and cannot stop. I wonder if it is possible to pull the shades to bring ot the city lights more, or has that possibility already been exhausted?

[ColinM]

Thanks Øivind

I wonder if it is possible to pull the shades to bring ot the city lights more?

My PP skills are quite limited.
I already used Colour Control points to selectivrly accentuate the suburban lights by adjusting brightness and contrast. I'm sure more skillful use of other tools would improve things.

I actually bracketed exposure across several shots, but the ones with the best lights understandably then had blown out details in the moon. Would you blend content from different shots?

[Øivind Tøien]

I am no expert in blending, but judging from results from others, it seems there can be a problem with halo around the moon in the case of eclipse images. Some examples here:
https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/799191-lunar-eclipse-and-the-pleiades/?p=11511167 (also further down the thread). For a nearly full moon perhaps that would not be too distracting.