Monday, January 25, 2010
The Moon and Pleiades January 25, 2009
While the Moon didn't occult the Pleiades from Adelaide, I thought it would be a good opportunity to try my various combinations of binoculars and telescopes to see if I could get some good images of the Moon near the the Pleiades.The binoculars (10x50, with an adaptor mount to attach them to my camera stand so they didn't wobble around while viewing) gave the best view, lots of little crisp craters and I could see the whole of the Pleiades in the binocular field of view along with the Moon.
In terms of photography, it was shocking. The Moon was grossly overexposed (as seen above) although the stars are okay and you can clearly see the shape of the Pleiades almost touching the Moon.The view through the telescope (4.5" Newtonian) didn't get all of the Pleiades in, even on the smallest eyepiece. Still the detail in the craters was good, and it was nice seeing the Smaller Pleiades hovering above the Moon.
But even in the scope the Moon was vastly over exposed (not really surprising). but the Pleiades show up okay.
What the Moon looks like when not over exposed (click to embiggen, true for all the images). Not bad at all if I say so myself. All images taken with the help of my favourite toy.
Labels: astrophotography, Moon, Occultation, Pleiades
# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 10:28 pm 
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