Crescent Moon and Saturn Conjunction January 16, 2015

I was writing the previous blog post and looked into Stellarium to see the separation of Venus and Mercury but I was distracted by the Moon and Saturn in conjunction - I didn't even realize! I looked out the back window and sure enough there they were hanging out in the pre-dawn light.

Refine edge layer composite photo

I tried something a little different with this composite photo (above) and I'm not quite sure I pulled it off. It's definitely borderline tacky, but I'm working on it. It's a composite photo with one longer exposure to show the earthshine on the dark side of the crescent moon, and an appropriately exposed crescent moon photo to show the crater details. Combining them in a believable way is the tricky part!

Above: The crater detail moon is ISO 200, 300mm, f/11, 1/25 sec; the earthshine layer is ISO 200, 300mm, f/9, 1.3 sec with the brightness turned up even more. I used the refine edge tool in Photoshop to try to blend the layers.

Below: This is the kind of composite I'm familiar with, it's a simple crop composite of two different exposures, one for the moon and one for Saturn. In this one, Saturn is at ISO 200, 300mm, f/11, 1 sec; the moon is as ISO 200, 300mm, f/11, 1/25 sec.

Simple crop composite photo