Mars & the Moon shining on the sparkling waters of Mount's Bay

[RichardL]

Good evening,

Mars, and Mars and the Moon shining on the sparkling waters of Mounts Bay, as the Milky Way cascades in all its majesty over St. Michael's Mount.

I'm still blown away everytime I look at these images that Mars was shining on the sea was actually visible to the naked-eye! An absolutely amazing night! 

For the one with only Mars shining on the water, I used a stack of two images, taken at 12mm, f/2.8, ISO1600 and exposed for 25 seconds - while ideally I'd like to have used a stack of 8 images to reduce noise in the sky, followed by a longer exposure for the foreground, teh clouds had other ideas! 

To capture both Mars and the Moon shining on the waters, the 12mm lens being too narrow, so I attempted a 3 by 2 panorama, but a) having never tried it before, and b) being completely oblivious to the challenges involved, only 2 out of 6 images were able to be stitched - a third was then layered and blended manually to remove a pesky cloud obscuring part of the Milky Way. this was probably the one time I was thankful for some cloud cover - to reduce the light of the Waxing Crescent Moon (illumination 31%).

All images were taken at f/2.8, ISO 1600 and exposed for 25 seconds.

• PhotoPills used for celestial alignment
• Lightroom - used for initial post processing
• Photoshop/Camera Raw - for combining, stacking, layering and final adjustments
• Photoshop plugins & actions: Astronomy Tools v1.6, AstroFlat Pro and Photographing Space

The Tale of Mars and the Moon by Richard Leighton, on Flickr


St. Michaels Mount by night by Richard Leighton, on Flickr


I've also a few photos on Instagram if anyone is interested @galacticescapes  - Is anyone else on Instagram?

Wishing you All Clear Skies,
Richard 

   

[Fay]

Great pictures Richard

Fay

[Carole]

These are excellent Richard, great composition as well.

Carole

[MarkS]

Great pictures - I like those a lot.

What camera did you use?

Mark

[The Thing]

A-may-zing. I can see your images in next years calendar already. We a few years ago we used to poo-poo these sort of images when they were in the Astrophotographer of the Year but I think a bit of jealousy was creeping in. Very nice.

[Carole]

I can see your images in next years calendar already

We already have chosen some of Richard's previous images for the calendar of similar quality.  The deadline was 31.8.2018, so these will get included in the 2020 calendar choice. 

Carole

[RichardL]

Hi Mark,

I use a Sony a6300 camera and Samyang 12mm f/2 lens.

Thanks
Richard