Earthshine on the moon - HDR
New Orion 8" f/4 Astrograph

 
 

            
 The sky was
            clear, wind dying down, and although there was considerable dust
            in the air from outside of Arizona (china or LA pollution?) I
            decided to try to do some HDR work on the moon and see if I could
            bring out the Earthshine on the un illuminated portion. A complete
            series of images was taken with the Orion f/4 Astrograph, ranging
            in time from 1/250 second to 15 seconds to really blast the earthshine.
            Ill show you both ends of the spectrum here, and my moderately
            successful attempt at combining them into one high dynamic frame
            image. I tried photoshops HDR, but that was a mess and so did
            it manually the old fashioned way.

            
I might add that
            the huge amount of dust had a strong yellowing effect and nulled
            out any blue tint on the Earthshine portion.

            
At the bottom is
            an image I took with my fisheye lens as it was getting dark and
            I had set up showing the entire observatory with the roof rolled
            back.


Click on the images below for a 1290 wide sized image!

 

            

Short exposure showing the moons normal appearance.

            
Select an image size for 
a larger view:

1290 x 960



            

15 seconds showing the unlit portion of the moon
lit only by the Earths Gibbous  disk in its sky.

            
Select an image size for 
a larger view:

1290 x 960



            

An attempt to combine both images in to one. Not
pretty but instructive.

            
Select an image size for 
a larger view:

1290 x 960



            

The inside of the observatory at Happy Jack, with me
standing on one corner with the Fish eye lens!  The
Stellarvue SV80s Astrograph is on the back for
alternating guiding or imaging.

            
Select an image size for 
a larger view:

1290 x 960


Optics:  8" f/4 Newtonian Astrograph w/Baader MPCC Coma Corrector
Platform:  Homemade GEM  
Camera:  Hutech Modified Canon XTi @ ISO200
Exposure:  1/250 - 15 sec
Location:  Happy Jack, Arizona
Elevation:  6800 ft.
Sky:  Seeing  6/10, Transparency 5/10
Outside Temperature:  38F
Processing Tools:  Photoshop CS2, Images Plus 3.82
HOME   GALAXIES     EMISSION NEBS     REFLECTION NEBS   COMETS  
   GLOBULARS     OPEN CLUST     PLANETARIES     LINKS