Moon, Antares, M4 & NGC 6144 in Scorpius from 2008 - repro

[Dennis]

In the last 2½ years, my Photoshop skills have improved so I had another go at processing this composite of the Moon, Antares, M4 and NGC6144.

At around 1:50am, on April 24th in 2008, there was a conjunction of our Moon, the brilliant red star Antares and globular clusters M4 & NGC 6144 in Scorpius. Due to the huge difference in the brightness range of these celestial objects, it was impossible to capture their splendour in a single photo.

However, I managed to grab some images of the stellar background (sans Moon), from the previous week and combine these in Photoshop with a photo of the Moon taken just after 1:49am on the 24th April.

Background star field taken with a Vixen ED102S F9 refractor with Canon 40D DSLR camera at prime focus.

Moon image taken with a Takahashi Mewlon 180 at F9.6 using x0.8 Flattener/Reducer with Canon 40D DSLR camera.

So, if your eyes had a sufficiently large dynamic range, this is what you might have observed, if you had been outdoors in the wee hours of 24th April 2008.

Cheers

Dennis

[h0ughy (David)]

LOL the ultimate HDR Dennis. Those long cloudy nights must be really bad and getting to you. lovely repro rendition

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Very cool, nice 3D effect

[troypiggo (Troy)]

Aside from the rare event that you've been fortunate enought to capture here, the Moon looks fantastic in this shot. Sharp, colourful, wonderful.

[jase (Jason)]

Very cool Dennis. If only our eyes were of this calibre! Appreciate your effort. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers

[Dennis]

Thanks guys!

The weather hasn’t been too cooperative the last couple of years in SE Qld, although this also coincided with a temporary waning in my enthusiasm and motivation for astronomy. However, now that my interest has been renewed, enter La Nina stage left and Voilà, horizon to zenith to horizon clouds! Oh well, re-processing old data and tweaking the gear will have to do eh!

Oh, and macro photography too!

Cheers

Dennis

[astroron (Ron)]

Dennis Fantastic image I will now have to replace the earlier version I had saved for this one
Cheers

[RB (Andrew)]

Lovely repro Dennis, oh to have bionic eyes with a few extra f-stops.....

[Hagar (Doug)]

Nice image Dennis, Really looks the works. Great job processing this it must have been a challenge.
Nice.

[RobF (Rob)]

Wow Dennis - a very striking image and really shows off how far you've come in Photoshop

It looks to me like something I'd find thumbing through beautiful posters in a shop at the Smithsonian
(that's meant to be a big compliment BTW)