The Mars-Pleiades Conjunction
Images taken on March 2, 2021
Mars reflects the sun's light and is ~22 light minutes from Earth. The Pleiades is an open star cluster that is ~ 442 light years away from us. While these two are so different, both of them are prominent and easy to spot in the night sky. It’s very cool to witness the two so close to each other. I knew this was happening, but my life and job have been so busy lately it slipped my mind until it was basically happening already.
Step outside tonight and take a lookup. You can find this event just ahead of the constellation Orion. The next time these two will be near each other in our night sky again in 2038!
Equipment:
Celestron CGEM Mount
Canon FD 300mm f/4 L at f/5.6
Sony a7RIII (unmodified)
Altair 60mm Guide scope
GPCAM2 Mono Camera
Acquisition:
Taos, NM: my backyard - Bortle 3
10 x 121" for 20 min and 10 sec of exposure time.
10 dark frames
15 flats frames
15 bais frames
Guided
Software:
SharpCap
PHD2
DeepSkyStacker
Photoshop
My mount was polar aligned with SharpCap (what an amazing system for aligning). I'm not comfortable using my SCT as my lens yet. My solution is to piggyback my Sony a7RIII and adapted Canon FD 300mm f/4 L on a ADM dovetail rail on the top of my optical tube. I used DeepSkyStacker to combine all frames and then processed the TIFF file in Photoshop. I stretched the 32 bit file and used Gradient XT on the image. I then made it a 16 bit file and stretched in level, then curves. I used the color sampler tool and levels to do my best to keep the background space black. I then using my skillset and relied on Astronomy Tools Action Set, and dodging and burning a bit to give the image the finishing touches.
The Mars-Pleiades Conjunction
Images taken on March 2, 2021
Mars reflects the sun's light and is ~22 light minutes from Earth. The Pleiades is an open star cluster that is ~ 442 light years away from us. While these two are so different, both of them are prominent and easy to spot in the night sky. It’s very cool to witness the two so close to each other. I knew this was happening, but my life and job have been so busy lately it slipped my mind until it was basically happening already.
Step outside tonight and take a lookup. You can find this event just ahead of the constellation Orion. The next time these two will be near each other in our night sky again in 2038!
Equipment:
Celestron CGEM Mount
Canon FD 300mm f/4 L at f/5.6
Sony a7RIII (unmodified)
Altair 60mm Guide scope
GPCAM2 Mono Camera
Acquisition:
Taos, NM: my backyard - Bortle 3
10 x 121" for 20 min and 10 sec of exposure time.
10 dark frames
15 flats frames
15 bais frames
Guided
Software:
SharpCap
PHD2
DeepSkyStacker
Photoshop
My mount was polar aligned with SharpCap (what an amazing system for aligning). I'm not comfortable using my SCT as my lens yet. My solution is to piggyback my Sony a7RIII and adapted Canon FD 300mm f/4 L on a ADM dovetail rail on the top of my optical tube. I used DeepSkyStacker to combine all frames and then processed the TIFF file in Photoshop. I stretched the 32 bit file and used Gradient XT on the image. I then made it a 16 bit file and stretched in level, then curves. I used the color sampler tool and levels to do my best to keep the background space black. I then using my skillset and relied on Astronomy Tools Action Set, and dodging and burning a bit to give the image the finishing touches.