Moon and Mercury rising over Brisbane CBD

[StephenM]

Hi all,

There was a nice conjunction of the crescent Moon and Mercury (at greatest western elongation) this morning, so I headed up Mt Coot-tha before dawn to get some images. I took an image every 3 minutes, beginning at about 4:15 am, and then stacked them using Startrails software. It worked out quite nicely, in that the pre-dawn colour was just beginning to appear as Mercury moved out of the top of the frame.

I haven't had a chance to do much in the way of processing of these images yet - I basically just stacked them. Will try and reprocess them this evening.

Anyway, here is the result!

Cheers,
Stephen

[iceman]

Very nice! Love it!

[h0ughy]

nice going - we had a similar view - with shades of grey

[StephenM]

Thanks Mike and David! I think I should have extended the gap between exposures to 4 minutes rather than 3. Something to try next time I guess.

Cheers,
Stephen

[firstlight]

Nice work Stephen

[von Tom]

Excellent work and dedication Stephen! :)

Tom

[StephenM]

Thanks Tony and Tom. It was worth the early start, but I'm feeling it now! I have to say though, it was very quiet up at the summit this morning. Every other time, I've been joined by other like-minded photographers, but this morning it was just me.

I've just done a bit of a repro, making the sky colour a bit more vibrant and correcting lens distortion in LR3 before stacking the images. New version is attached.

Cheers,
Stephen

[Quark]

Simply Stunning effect Stephen, exceptionally well done.

Regards
Trevor

[StephenM]

Thanks very much Trevor!

Cheers,
Stephen

[Liz]

Brilliant Stephen!! I was also out enjoying the view and taking a few pics. :) My pics are OK, but outa focus a tad :sadeyes: so wont post on IIS. Facebook is much more forgiving. ;)

[Clayton]

Lovely work Stephen :)

[StephenM]

Thanks very much Liz! It was a nice view wasn't it. I saw a couple of fairly bright meteors in between taking images as well.

Cheers,
Stephen



Thanks Clayton! I'm glad you like the result.

Cheers,
Stephen

[naskies]

Looks fantastic! I really enjoy seeing your Mt Cootha sequences.

[Harley]

Good Job Very Nice

[Matt Wastell]

Super stuff Stephen!

[StephenM]

Thanks for the comments Dave, Gilbert and Matt! Much appreciated.

Cheers,
Stephen

[andyc]

Congratulations Stephen on your excellent sequence being the APOD today! Quite an accolade:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

:prey2:

[StephenM]

Thanks very much Andy! I'm pretty happy with how this image came out, and it's a real bonus to have it featured as an APOD!

(There's a thread running in the General Chat forum as well.)

Cheers,
Stephen

[von Tom]

Congrats Stephen!!

Tom

[StephenM]

Thanks Tom!

Cheers,
Stephen

[04Stefan07]

Very cool, I like it!