Tonight’s First Quarter Moon Tonight’s moon is remarkably close to Aldebaran, the brightest star in the constellation Taurus. A gossamer web of high cirrus clouds have convinced me not to head out for Starbase One with telescope and camera in tow. However, since the moon was high and perfectly visible between the treetops, I couldn’t resist taking advantage of the opportunity. Because of the thin veil of clouds, I knew that I couldn’t take any pictures at high magnification, so I opted to use my little department store telescope and try a couple shots at a moderately low power. This would allow me to simply use a photographic tripod and not bother with any complicated equipment. Even though I was aware that by using the scope I would be able to cut through some of the cloud cover, I was quite surprised to get an image as crisp as this one. The second photograph is the best I shot I was able to get without the telescope. I wanted to get a picture to capture both the moon and Aldebaran (bright star at 5:00 next to the moon) as well as the cloud cover. The bright moonlight lights up the clouds and the moon itself is washed out. A shorter exposure that would have shown the moon better would not have captured any stars. The third picture is one that I downloaded from the internet showing the telescope kit that I used to capture these images. All that I added to this was my Cannon T3 DSLR camera and an adaptor ring. I keep being amazed by how the DSLR has changed the whole face of astrophotography, even with using this little $65 telescope. ...
Posted on: Sat, 08 Mar 2014 05:26:57 +0000
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