Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Taurus (Tau)  ·  Contains:  1093 Freda  ·  11 Tau  ·  11.77  ·  13 Tau  ·  13.04  ·  13.27  ·  13.29  ·  14 Tau  ·  14.28  ·  14.50  ·  14.69  ·  15.19  ·  150 Nuwa  ·  165 Loreley  ·  17 Per  ·  17 Tau  ·  175 Andromache  ·  18 Tau  ·  21 Per  ·  23 Tau  ·  24 Per  ·  24 Tau  ·  26 Tau  ·  28 Tau  ·  30 e Tau  ·  32 Tau  ·  33 Tau  ·  337 Devosa  ·  35 lam Tau  ·  36 Tau  ·  And 281 more.
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Lunar Eclipse November 19, 2021, Malcolm Park
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Lunar Eclipse November 19, 2021

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Lunar Eclipse November 19, 2021, Malcolm Park
Powered byPixInsight

Lunar Eclipse November 19, 2021

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Description

A few weeks ago I made a plan to capture this morning’s lunar eclipse.The idea was, if I could capture the starfield where the eclipse was going to be at maximum (before eclipse day, without the moon to interfere), I could bring out the nebulosity and star colour in the background sky, and combine that with the eclipsed moon on eclipse day.The weather put a crimp on my plans this morning though.When I woke up at 2:30am to take the eclipse shot, it was cloudy.But  I was able to drive about 40km to the north-east for somewhat clear skies with time to spare to set up and align my polar tracking mount and get the shot.I used the exact same camera and lens for each shot. 50mm Sigma art lens on Nikon D810a. Tracking was done with a portable Star Adventurer tracker.For the star field, I took a set of 30 x 30s exposures (I took short exposures to keep risk of trailing down, and more exposures to improve signal to noise ratio) with the Nikon D810A, a camera that has been modified to be more Ha sensitive. That brings out the California Nebula. I calibrated the light frames with darks, flats and bias frames and stacked in Pixinsight.Then this morning, I framed the same field of view with the same camera and lens so as to get the moon at the correct position and scale. Using the Pleiades as my alignment guide, I then merged the two layers in Photoshop.I recognize that composite images have their pluses, and minuses.It may be a flight of fancy to some, but it may be quite interesting and even informative to others.In the field of view we have the Hyades star cluster with Aldebaran, in blue we have the Pleiades (aka Subaru or the Seven Sisters) and in red is NGC 1499 (the California Nebula) and of course, the full moon at about 97% eclipse.

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Lunar Eclipse November 19, 2021, Malcolm Park