Dawn gathering of the Pleiades, Hyades, Aldebaran, Orion, Venus and Jupiter
Hello,
Here is a cold portrait of the dawn gathering of the Pleiades, Hyades, Aldebaran, Orion, Venus and Jupiter as seen from our back garden in Brisbane, at a cool 4°C on Saturday, 4th August at 5:32am.
The photo is a single frame, 60 sec, ISO400 at F5.6 taken at the 17mm end of a Canon 17-40 F4L fitted to a Canon 40D.
The previous day I had just received my Astronomik CLS (EOS-Clip) filter from Bintel which I fitted to the 40D. Previously, I would not have even attempted this wide shot, directly into the glow of the Brisbane CBD due to the extreme light pollution.
After breakfast I had a look at the other 60 sec frames taken more towards twilight and noticed a flare or short trail, which I took to be a Perseid meteor (peaks Aug 12) as it in the region of the constellation Perseus.
However, after downloading the latest satellite files in Starry Night Pro Plus 6, it appears the trail belongs to a magnitude 2.83 pass of the artificial satellite Iridium 98 [S] which showed up on in the image with an EXIF time of 5:42:13am.
As one can never have too many objects in a single frame, I blended the Iridium trail into this darker frame recorded earlier, at 5:32am.
very nice Dennis. will you be widefielding at astrofest this year sir?
Hi Dave
Thanks for stopping by and having a peek! Amongst other things, it seems that I’ve lost my appetite for Astrofest, so unfortunately I’m not planning to attend this year.
I feel a slight twinge of guilt due to the enormous distance you and Alan will be travelling! I hope that the weather is kind to everyone and wish you clear skies and an abundance of tightly collimated, focused photons!
Thank you Rick, Andrew (again!) and Greg, I appreciate your comments.
The performance of the Astronomik CLS (EOS-Clip) Filter has exceeded my wildest expectations and having the mount just plain old tracking at a focal length of 17mm is sooo much easier than auto guiding at 1 metre+ fl’s! I could get used to this!
Thanks for looking and posting your nice comments Liz and Marc, I appreciate them.
The biggest problem in shooting from Brisbane is the horribly light polluted skies and it wasn’t until I fitted the Astronomik CLS filter which blocks the worst wavelengths that I could begin to expose for longer than say, 30 seconds, without the skies turning a yucky colour.
Here are a couple of example photos. The first is a 60 sec shot (60mm) without the filter showing the horrible sky tones. The second is the raw, unprocessed 60 second shot (17mm) with the filter which I originally posted above.
That's terrific Dennis.
