Another Rendezvous

Another opportunity to see the Moon dance across the night sky with the star cluster, the Pleiades! My last chance to see this was in October, and the sky was too clouded over to see anything, so I waited patiently for this one to come along.

I watch these in my Stellarium app to see when the events will occur so I can get my shot! This time, I planned in advance, and captured the star cluster during a New Moon phase when the sky was dark. I set up my Sony astromodified A7S III with a 200-600 lens on an equatorial mount to track the stars so that I could get a series of images of the Pleiades without trails, which I would later stack together to get the lovely gasses around the cluster. I wanted to have this with a good star field so that I could blend it with the Moon during the pass on this night.

Then, tonight I was able to shoot the event at 6:45 pm with the Moon passing over the Pleiades.

This is the final result. Keep looking up! There is always something to see up there!

Sony A7 IV
Sony A7S III Astromodified
Sony 200-600
SkyWatcher EQM-35

10 Images of Pleiades taken during New Moon phase, tracked and stacked in Starry Landscape Stacker and edited in Lightroom and Photoshop
2 Images of Moon and Pleiades taken Dec 3, edited in Lightroom and Photoshop, stacked with Pleiades for final result.