Another astrophoto session near Targoviste, this time the main subject being our Moon.
While trying to capture the frames for a lunar mosaic, my brother-in-law and I were rewarded with two atmospheric optics phenomena around the Moon: one was a small but nice corona, while the other was a large halo.
For the first one, I’ve tried to merge a few frames acquired with different exposure times (from 1/400s to 2 s) into a single High Dynamic Range shot, to show both the outer colors of the corona and the size of the Moon inside it. The frames were acquired with the Canon 550D and a Canon 100mm Macro lens at F/2.8. The result:
The second image, showing the large halo and some colors in the upper and lower arcs, was acquired with the same camera but the lens was a Samyang 8mm fisheye.
The halo shot was mentioned on the first page of SpaceWeather.
UPDATE:
I’ve processed some other images from the night of January 3rd.
The first is a lunar mosaic made using the TS APO 4.5″ F/7 Refractor and a DMK 21 mono camera with a Baader Green filter. The camera was mounted directly in the focal planet of the instrument, with no other Barlow lens. It is a 12 image mosaic, each a 300 frame stack. The seeing was horrible most of the time, with only a few moments of steadier images during a 15 minute period.
The second image was also acquired using the 4.5″ APO but this time the imaging sensor was the Canon 550D. The result of six series of frames, each a stack of 20 to 50 images with different exposures, is a High Dynamic Range photograph showing both the colors of the Moon (over-saturated) and those of the corona surrounding the Moon.
By combining the above image with the lunar mosaic, I’ve increased slightly the details on the lunar disc, but kept the colors of the corona and those of the Moon in the same image:
And now I can show all the colors of the or due to the Moon from that night:
The images were acquired with focal lengths of 8mm, 100mm and 800mm respectively. The image below shows the positioning of each of the images in the previous one.
Hope to have a similar chance in the near future at photographing such atmospheric phenomena.
Max
maximus photography 