The Local Group spiral galaxy, Messier 33 in Triangulum, with some of its star forming nebulas showing up as green-blue regions in its spiral arms. The field also contains some faint and much more distant 13th to 15th magnitude galaxies. This is a stack of 20 x 4-minute exposures, 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. Noise reduction with RC-Astro Noise XTerminator. All stacking, alignment and processing in Photoshop.
A wide-angle view of the total eclipse of the Moon of November 8, 2022, with the red Moon at right amid the stars of the northern winter sky and Milky Way, plus with bright red Mars at top. Above and left of the Moon is the blue Pleiades star cluster, while below it and to the left is the larger Hyades cluster with reddish Aldebaran in Taurus. The stars of Orion are left of centre, including reddish Betelgeuse, while at far left are the two Dog Stars: Procyon, at top, in Canis Minor, and Sirius, at bottom, in Canis Major. So this is a gathering of many red stars, planets and the rare red Moon. I shot the frames for this scene beginning at 3:50 am MST, 10 minutes before mid-totality during this 1h25m-long total eclipse. Some ice haze this night added the natural star glows. Either bands of airglow, or perhaps just reflected lights off the icy haze add the reddish bands to the sky. The sky scene appears over the old abandoned pioneer house on my property. This is a stack of 4 x 1-minute tracked exposures at ISO 1600 for the sky, blended with a single 1-minute tracked exposure at ISO 1600 for the ground to minimize blurring (I left the tracker running at the sidereal rate for all frames), plus a 5-second exposure for the Moon itself at ISO 400 to preserve the colouration of the disk and not overexpose it. However, I enlarged this short exposure Moon by 1.5x to cover up the overexposed Moon better and to better simulate the naked eye view where the eye and brain always thinks the Moon is much larger than the 0.5° it really is in the sky. A mild Orton glow added to the entire scene with Luminar Neo. All frames the Canon RF15-35mm lens at 16mm and f/2.8 on the Canon R5, and on the Star Adventurer tracker. Shot from home in southern Alberta on a night that we were lucky to have clear at all, as it had been snowing heavily all day. It cleared at night as predicted, but the temperature dropped to -25° C, so just operating gear was a chore, limiting my ambitions this night! And my travels. Snowy roads kept me home, but for once I didn't need to chase clear skies for a lunar eclipse.
This is the totally eclipsed Moon of November 8, 2022 set in the stars of Aries, with the planet Uranus nearby, visible as the greenish star about three Moon diameters away from the Moon at the 10 o'clock position. Uranus was at oppostion the next night, November 9, at magnitude 5.6. I shot the set of images for this scene at about 3:28 a.m. MST, about 20 minutes after the start of this long totality, so the right (lunar eastern) limb of the Moon was still fairly bright. The field of view is about 7.6° by 5°. This is a blend of four exposures to compress the dynamic range and record the stars while maintaining the Moon more as the eye saw it. I blended a 5-second exposure at ISO 1600 for the stars, with 1-, 2-, and 5-second exposures at ISO 200 for the lunar disk, all with the Canon Ra on the SharpStar 61mm EDPH refractor with the Reducer/Flattener for f/4.6. The scope and camera were on the Star Adventurer tracker, turning at the sidereal rate for the long exposure for the stars but at the slower lunar rate for the shorter, lower ISO exposures for the Moon. Blending was with old-fashioned manual masking, not HDR routines or even luminosity masks. It was -25° C this night, and with several inches of snow having just fallen that day, so I kept the gear complexity to a minimum. However, using a 280mm focal length scope on the tracker was pushing it. Most long exposures for the starfield were trailed. I shot several sets of "HDR" exposures to be sure I got one that worked.
