The red planet Mars in the winter sky lit by the waxing gibbous Moon, off frame at right. Mars is at centre, and nearly at its brightest for the year with it 4 days before its December 2022 opposition. It appears in Taurus, east of the Hyades and below the Pleiades, and above Orion. Sirius is rising at bottom just above the horizon. Procyon and Canis Minor is at lower left, with Castor and Pollux in Gemini above. At upper left is Capella in Auriga. The stars of Perseus at at top. Taken from home in Alberta, December 3, 2022, with the old rake as a foreground object. This is a stack of 4 images for the ground to reduce noise blended with one exposure for the sky, all 13 seconds at f/4 with the Canon RF15-35mm lens at 16mm, on the Canon R5 at ISO 800. All untracked on a fixed tripod. Diffraction spikes added for artistic effect with Astronomy Tools actions.
The Pleiades, aka Messier 45, embedded in the dusty nebulosity the star cluster is passing through in Taurus. The dust clouds are illuminated by light from the hot young blue stars. This is a stack of just 12 x 4-minute exposures, as incoming Earth clouds spoiled some frames and prevented more exposures. Even so, some high haze hampered some of the images used in the final set. All were with the Starfield Optics Géar115 f/7 apo refractor taken as part of testing the scope, with its 0.8x Adjustable Reducer for f/5.6 and with the stock 45-megapixel Canon R5 at ISO 800. Autoguided and dithered with the MGEN3 autoguider on the Astro-Physics Mach1 mount. No dark frames or LENR applied on this mild night in November. I brought out the faint dust clouds with the application of luminosity masks created with Lumenzia extension panel in Photoshop, plus an application of the Nebula Filter action from the Photokemi Star Tools action set on a separate stamped layer and blended into the final image. Noise reduction with RC-Astro Noise XTerminator. All stacking, alignment and processing in Photoshop.
