The rising of the nearly Full Moon, the Harvest Moon of 2020, on September 30, from a site near home in Alberta, looking just south of due east this night. Refraction distorts the disk and atmospheric absorption reddens the disk toward the horizon. This is a multiple exposure composite of 6 images with the Canon 6D MkII through the 80mm A&M apo refractor at f/6 without field flattener. Taken as part of a time-lapse sequence with images every 2 seconds. The frames for this blend were taken 2 minutes apart, so selected from every 60 frames out of the sequence. All were at 1/8 second at ISO 100. Images stacked in Photoshop and blended with Lighten mode. The ground comes from the first image.
A 180° panorama of a display of Northern Lights to the northeast, the first in many weeks for us in a Kp4 level display, with bright Mars amid clouds to the southeast, at right. Mars was near opposition and so nearly at its brightest at this time. The Big and Little Dippers are at left to the north; the Pleiades is right of centre to the east. Moonlight from the low gibbous Moon off frame to the southeast provides the illumination. Taken from home, Sept 25-26, 2020, in a stitch of 6 segments, all 20 seconds at f/2.8 and ISO 1600 with the Sigma Art 14mm lens and Nikon D750. Stitched with Adobe Camera Raw.
The Heart Nebula (at right), aka IC 1805, and the Soul Nebula (at left), aka IC 1848 but also known as the Embryo Nebula, all in Cassiopeia. The small patch of nebulosity at upper right is NGC 896; the small and hard to distinguish star cluster above centre is NGC 1027. The loose star cluster at the heart of the Heart Nebula is Mel 15. The dust-reddened and small galaxies Maffei I and II are in the field at bottom right. This is a stack of: — 10 x 6-minutes at ISO 800 without a filter, — 4 x 12-minutes at ISO 2000 with an Optolong L-Enhance filter, — and 3 x 8-minutes at ISO 3200 with an IDAS LPR v3 filter … Taken as part of a series testing various filters. The IDAS did nearly as good a job as the L-Enhance. All were through the Borg 77mm f/4 astrographic refractor with the Canon EOS Ra camera, and autoguided with the new Lacerta MGEN-3 stand-alone autoguider, using its dithering function to shift the images a few pixels between each exposure so when aligning any thermal noise specks average out. It worked very well. All taken without LENR or dark frames though this was a cool night, this first night of autumn, Sept. 22-23, 2020. Taken from home on the Astro-Physics Mach1 mount. All stacking, aligning and blending with Photoshop 2020.
