by Marsha Kirschbaum » Sun May 30, 2021 7:24 pm
In Space with Rho and the Eclipsed Moon by
Marsha Kirschbaum, on Flickr
Ever since I first saw this “cloud” complex imaged, I fell in love with it – it’s colorful, gaseous, abstract beauty is contained in the constellation Scorpius. It is punctuated by the bright stars beginning with yellowish Antares (left, middle border of image), and continuing counter clockwise, Crab Globular Cluster, Alniyat, oSco and iSco that form a kind of 5 pointed circle. To the upper right of the eclipsed moon about 2 o’clock is another gaseous cloud, somewhat triangle shaped, and the bright star Jabbah.
I knew this image would be a challenge to capture and process because, even eclipsed, the light of the moon would still overpower the much further away details of the cloud complex.
On a star tracker, 10, 30 second light frames or “regular” photos imaged at ISO 16000, were stacked and processed with flats in Sirl to bring out the details of Rho. The moon is a single image at 1/10 second, ISO 8000, also tracked, taken just before the 30 light frame second sequence. It is blended with the 30 second stack in Photoshop in the same position as seen in the sky at that time. Further editing done in Lightroom.
[url=https://flic.kr/p/2m2xnxZ][img]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51213265371_9b058b5951.jpg[/img][/url][url=https://flic.kr/p/2m2xnxZ]In Space with Rho and the Eclipsed Moon[/url] by [url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/mkirschbaum/]Marsha Kirschbaum[/url], on Flickr
Ever since I first saw this “cloud” complex imaged, I fell in love with it – it’s colorful, gaseous, abstract beauty is contained in the constellation Scorpius. It is punctuated by the bright stars beginning with yellowish Antares (left, middle border of image), and continuing counter clockwise, Crab Globular Cluster, Alniyat, oSco and iSco that form a kind of 5 pointed circle. To the upper right of the eclipsed moon about 2 o’clock is another gaseous cloud, somewhat triangle shaped, and the bright star Jabbah.
I knew this image would be a challenge to capture and process because, even eclipsed, the light of the moon would still overpower the much further away details of the cloud complex.
On a star tracker, 10, 30 second light frames or “regular” photos imaged at ISO 16000, were stacked and processed with flats in Sirl to bring out the details of Rho. The moon is a single image at 1/10 second, ISO 8000, also tracked, taken just before the 30 light frame second sequence. It is blended with the 30 second stack in Photoshop in the same position as seen in the sky at that time. Further editing done in Lightroom.