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Community photo entitled  by Catherine Hyde on 03/14/2024 at Cambria, CA USA

On 03/14/2024 08:36 pm by Catherine Hyde| Cambria, CA USA

I read in my EarthSky News that the moon would be very close to the Pleiades on the 14th, and I just love that kind of image. I used my new reflector scope because it creates the lovely light diffraction that I thought would add to the mood. Of course it's very hard to shoot the moon with anything else unless it's the tiniest crescent, but I just let the brightness of the moon be what it was. These are 8-second exposures. More about how I processed this (to help the stars show up) above.

Takahashi Epsilon 130 scope, Nikon D810A camera, Astro-Physics Mach2 tracking mount

I took 125 8-second images, tracking on the stars. Of course the moon was moving at a different rate. So I separated the stars from the background and used a stack of 125 star images, to help the Pleiades pop. Then I combined it with just one good moon image so the moon would not be blurred.