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Re: Venus and the Moon

Posted by Bret B on January 23, 2015, 8:10 pm, in reply to "Re: Venus and the Moon"
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All these great pictures on the board lately (especially from David Dagoli) have motivated me to get out and try some new things while the weather reporting is slow. Night sky photography is a good hobby for this time of year, when you can actually see the sky at night. In the summer, it seems like we can go for weeks without seeing a clear night sky.

Thanks to Clare who called me two nights ago about this great scene with Venus and the Moon. I had just enough time to trot down to the arroyo mouth to get this shot (after editing):


You can see Venus and the Moon, with Mercury down in the afterglow between the bird rock and the illuminated fishing boat. Because I used a fairly long exposure time (10 seconds), the "Earthglow" that illuminates the dark part of the moon is so strong that it combines with the overexposed sun-illuminated crescent to make the Moon look almost full.

I have to confess that part of my enjoyment of photography is the editing to bring out the best image hidden in the original shot. I spent a while working on this one. Here is the unedited original that I started with (only resized for the message board):


And here is a more close-up shot of Venus and the Moon:


Thanks to David for the motivation to get started, and to Clare for being the lookout, and to Daniel for finding those cool websites for the skygazers and photo nerds among us!

I'll try to get a few other nighttime shots posted if anyone is interested (Comet Lovejoy, Jupiter and its moons, maybe more...).

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