Pleiades, Hyades, Aldebaran, Jupiter, Venus, Moon, Orion & Sirius - 13 Aug 2012

[Dennis]

Hello,

Here is the dawn gathering of these celestial jewels as recorded from our back garden in Brisbane on 13th August 2012 at approx. 5:35am. The visual spectacle was far more impressive and inspiring that this image. Venus just cleared the trees, some of which are blurred due to the mount tracking over the 90 sec period. Noise was a significant problem – maybe a 5D Mk III might solve this problem!

Details:

• Canon 40D with Astronomik CLS filter
• ISO400, F5.6, 90 seconds
• 17-40mm F4 L at 17mm focal length

I had some problems with light scatter from the Moon, so the region around the Moon is a little ragged!

Cheers

Dennis

[lacad01 (Adam)]

Mighty fine looking pic

[theodog (Jeff)]

Nice one Dennis.

[Mighty_oz (Marcus)]

That looks real nice

Marcus

[Dennis]

Thanks guys, I appreciate your comments. As usual, further investigation has revealed an interloper, Ceres, which according to Wiki, was formally known as 1 Ceres.

Ceres is the only dwarf planet in the inner Solar System, and the largest asteroid. It is a rock–ice body some 950 km (590 mi) in diameter, and though the smallest identified dwarf planet, it constitutes a third of the mass of the asteroid belt.

I have updated the original images to identify this tiny body.

Cheers

Dennis

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Thats excellent Dennis, very clean and simple

Mike

[gregbradley]

I have used both 40D and 5D2 and I did not find the 5D2 to be much different in noise, a little better in 5D2 but not much.

Did you use internal noise correction? That works very well.

Greg,

[CapturingTheNight (Greg)]

Lovely image Dennis. I love waking up in the mornings at the moment and stepping out onto the back deck and admiring this sight. It's a favorite area of sky for me and to have the planets there as well, makes it even more so.

[Dennis]

Thanks Mike, Greg and Greg, I appreciate your comments.

Thanks for that useful information Greg B, much appreciated. I used the “in camera noise reduction” as I had the time to do this and didn’t really want to get into the taking dark frames process.

I had the 400mm F5.6L fitted on a side by side plate to take some shots of the waning Moon, but unfortunately underestimated how wide 17mm was on the 40D so a few frames were ruined by the red ring poking into the shot in the top right corner!

I have a lot of respect for the guys who shoot these nightscapes away from home; I was able to use EOS Utility on my PC to nail the focus and had access to mains power for the dew heaters that prevented the 17-40mm from dewing up.

Here is a 400mm F5.6L shot of the Moon from the same session.

Cheers

Dennis

[StephenM (Stephen)]

Looks like that CLS filter is performing very well for you Dennis! Nice widefield shot.

Cheers,
Stephen