Lunar timelapse this evening

[Kenny]

Having not used my camera for some time for astro I decided yesterday evening (14th) to have another go at a lunar time lapse from the back garden of my digs. So many mistakes made, I'm clearly out of practice but it's better to try than not.

• Canon 450D with Sigma DC 18-200mm at 18mm. With the benefit of hindsight, or a bit more planning, circa 33mm would have led to a much better result (and less cropping).
• 90 photos, 1 minute gap, at f/4.5, ISO100, 1/400th sec. 21:10 - 22:38. Only every 2nd photo was used in the end.
• I fell asleep.
• Woke up at 02:30. Packed up my very wet camera.
• Started reviewing the photos on my laptop after drying the camera. Then realised I'd forgotten to take a longer exposure shot to capture the foreground.
• Took my camera back outside, guessed at the position, took a series of sample foreground photos. Obviously in the intervening hours all the stars had moved considerably across the sky.
• Stacked in Startrails. Saw lots of hot pixels.
• Took some Darks. Failed to get Startrails to do anything useful with the Darks.
• Imported the RAW to Lightroom then opened as layers in Photoshop and blended, moved the foreground around then cropped.
• Final touches to the blended image back in Lightroom.

I offer this for your viewing pleasure but, given the comments above, it's not 'strictly' astronomically accurate. At best it's a composite that approximates what was visible over the period.

[Carole]

Looks really good Kenny.  Don't worry about adding the background in afterwards, you'd have had to have selected only one image and pasted the Moons on top anyway. 

Carole

[RachelC]

I really like it. And really good after an absence in using your camera etc. Thanks for sharing.