The Moon occults Pleiades

[rogerg]

I'm interested to hear what people think of this one. It's been hard to find a balance between bright Moon and fainter stars, without it looking excessively fake.

The shot is from the 15th January when The Moon Occulted (or at least came very close to) the Pleiades. I'm calling it an occultation because I know there were people around me timing and recording stars blinking out as the moon passed over, but whether those stars were technically pat o Pleiades I don't know.

The shot is a combination of:
20 x 1 second exposures to get the stars
20 x 1/640th second exposures to get the moon.

400ISO with Canon 7D, through William Optics Megrez 90 @ about 520mm (Borg DGL flattener).

Stacked in DSS & Registax respectively, then combined in Photoshop with, I will admit,a lot of work.

http://www.rogergroom.com/items/pleiades_moon_occultation_january_2 011_a

Roger.

[Liz]

I like it Roger. :thumbsup:
Hard to decrease the glare of Moon, but still looks good.

[rogerg]

Thanks Liz :)

I did remove all the glow around the moon, but found it looked too fake without it :), so put some back. :)

[michaellxv]

Looks very good to me. A nice balance between the moon, its glow and the stars.

[iceman]

That's really nice Roger, a great balance.

[rogerg]

Thanks Mike, much appreciated :)



Thanks :)

Much more positive responses than I was expecting :)