Mars and M44

[StephenM]

Hi all,

Here are a couple of images of Mars and M44, the Beehive Cluster taken last night. The first one is 18 x 3 sec exposures taken with a tripod-mounted pentax K100D (70-300mm telephoto @ 210mm, f/5.6, 1600 iso) stacked in DSS. The area shown in this image just fits in the field of view of my 7x50 binoculars.

The second is 2 minutes (8x15 sec) worth of star trails put together using the Startrails program. The focus was just a fraction off for these trails, allowing the colours of the stars in M44 to be revealed nicely.

Mars will be within a degree of M44 for the next few nights, so it's worth a look if you have a pair of binoculars!

Cheers,
Stephen

[renormalised]

Nice shot :)

[Dennis]

Nice work Stephen. The two photos side-by-side makes for a very interesting comparison, demonstrating quite clearly that our home planet does indeed rotate!

Much to the chagrin of long exposure, deep sky astro photographers!;)

Cheers

Dennis

[lacad01]

Yep, nice work with those two :thumbsup:

[RickS]

Nice images, Stephen, and an interesting contrast.

I hadn't heard of the Startrails app before. Thanks for that.

Cheers,
Rick.

[hotspur]

Thats nice-I like the 1st one,I may have go at this with L400 piggy backing scope.well done Stephen

[StephenM]

Thanks very much for the comments Carl, Dennis, Adam, Rick and Chris!

I took another image tonight (15th April), which is posted below.

Cheers,
Stephen

[Liz]

Very nice image from tonight Stephen. :thumbsup:

[StephenM]

Thanks Liz.

I agree - the second attempt is better than the first.

Cheers,
Stephen