Jupiter and Saturn nearing their Dec 21, 2020 Great Conjunction, with this image taken from home on December 1, 2020. Illumination is from the golden light from the rising waning gibbous Moon. This is a stack of 4 untracked images for the ground, and 2 tracked images for the sky, all 30 seconds with the 35mm Canon lens and Canon 6D MkII. Ground exposures at f/4.5 and ISO 400, sky exposures at ISO 200 and f/2.8. The camera was on the Star Adventurer 2i tracker.
Jupiter (the brightest object) and Saturn to the left, close together east of the Milky Way in the deep evening twilight, October 17, 2020. At this time they were heading toward a very close “grand conjunction” on December 21, 2020 when they would be much lower in the twilight. This is looking southwest. We had just received our first snow of the season. This is from home and with the Nikon D750 and Sigma 24mm lens for a stack of 8 x 15-second exposures for the ground to smooth noise and a single 15-second untracked exposure for the sky, all at f/2.8 and ISO 3200. A mild Orton Glow effect added with Luminar 4.
The Harvest Moon (the Full Moon of October 1, 2020) rising almost due east at the end of a country road in southern Alberta, near home. The horizon was smoky or dusty, so the Moon was very red as it rose, and looking almost like a totally eclipsed Moon. This is a blend of 6 exposures, all 1/2-second with the A&M 80mm f/6 apo refractor (for 480mm focal length) and Canon 6D MkII at ISO 400, taken as part of a 460-frame time-lapse sequence, with shots every 2 seconds. For this composite I choose 6 images at 2-minute intervals, so the Moon rose its own diameter between frames. The ground comes from the first image in the sequence when the lighting was brightest. The Moon rose at 7:35 pm this night, about 30 minutes after sunset. A mild Orton glow effect added to the ground with Luminar 4.
