By Mario Rana | 2023-02-23
![Community photo entitled by Shaun Tarpley on 02/22/2023 at League City, TX](https://earthsky.org/upl/gravity_forms/6-d184048789a60d766a02a8e43117298b/2023/02/23-0222-Crescent-Moon-and-Jupiter_Frame_12x18-V3-r2160.jpg)
On 02/22/2023 07:12 pm by Shaun Tarpley| League City, TX
I only had about a few minutes to take photos in my backyard before the sky was completely consumed by clouds the night of February 22, so I wasn't able to set up the star tracker. The moon was descending towards the Southwest as the Sun set. I took multiple images using only a tripod and a cable release which was only somewhat successful. Without tracking, the images had more noise and less detail than I would have preferred, but you can only take what the local weather gives you on the gulf coast. Even at only 7% illumination, there was still a notable difference in the light level between the bright and dark portions of the Moon, and Jupiter and its moons, so the best option to showcase this conjunction was to combine 3 different exposures into a single HDR diagram.
Nikon Z7ii, Nikkor TC-20EIII 2x Teleconverter, AF-S Nikkor 500mm f5.6E PF-ED (1000mm total) on an old Manfrotto 055XPROB tripod with a Benro Gear Drive 3 Way Head using a Nikon shutter release.
*IMAGE CORRECTED FOR SPELLING ERRORS*
This is a composite HDR image. I manually merged three photos and added notes in Photoshop. The main image of the crescent Moon and Jupiter was a 1/40 sec @f14 ISO 3200. This image defined the layout which is a slight 2:3 ratio crop of the original 1000mm capture of the two objects. The image that provided detail in the dark portion of the Moon was 1.3 sec @f11 ISO 2000 and the image with the most detail in Jupiter's moons was 0.4 sec @f14 ISO 3200.