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Community photo entitled Uranus with the Seven Sisters, shot at 135mm from home by Tom Tan on 03/02/2025 at Melbourne, Australia

Uranus with the Seven Sisters, shot at 135mm from home

On 03/02/2025 08:37 pm by Tom Tan | Melbourne, Australia

Uranus is the leftmost white dot above the treetop on the left edge.
The Seven Sisters (and parents) is on the bottom right edge. (The image was cropped).

The star patterns have been checked in Stellarium to identify Uranus.

The media has been saying about seven planets in a line and two of them cannot be seen without binoculars or telescopes.

This photo was shot with just a 135mm focal length on a full frame camera
at an ordinary exposure setting of 1/2 second and ISO 100 so
I guess a smartphone camera could have done it too.

I could not see anything except Jupiter. The sky was still bright but Uranus was setting.
I framed Jupiter at the top right corner so the Seven Sisters were at the bottom left corner. Then I "hopped left" or west to frame the Seven Sisters at the bottom right
corner so Uranus got to be somewhere left of centre. I had focused at Jupiter's moons and maybe re-focused at the Seven Sisters.

I took an exposure bracket and only saw Uranus during post processing
and had to match the star patterns in Stellarium using two displays.

Uranus drops half a degree (the moon's diameter) every night so I had caught it just in time. I shot this from outside my front door and there were tall trees in that direction.

Nikon zoom lens at 135mm and f/2.8
Nikon D750 full frame camera
remote shutter release
1/2 second ISO 100
tracking mount on tripod
focused at Jupiter's moons and/or the Seven Sisters

Darktable: contrast/highlights, curves
cropped with slight compression