A portrait of two comets each passing the Pleiades and in a similar location relative to the star cluster, but taken nearly 14 years apart. And I shot both with the same lens, a 200mm telephoto, from my backyard in Alberta. On the left is Comet Machholz (C/2004 Q2) discovered in 2004 by amateur astronomer Don Machholz, and at centre Comet 46P/Wirtanen, discovered in 1948 by professional astronomer Carl Wirtanen. Both comets became bright enough to be visible to the unaided eye. I shot Comet Machholz with a Canon Rebel 300D cropped-frame camera, and Comet Wirtanen with a Canon 6D MkII full-frame camera, so the image scale is different between the two images. So … on the far right is a version with the two images layered and auto-aligned with Photoshop, so the stars and field scale and orientation of the Machholz image match and register with the Wirtanen image. Pretty remarkable that Photoshop was able to do that on images so different in scale and orientation. Having lots of stars helped. This version shows the location of two comets with respect to the Pleiades best.
Venus above the Pleiades star cluster, M45, on April 4, 2020, in the twilight and moonlight. Light from the gibbous Moon illuminated the sky, so no long exposure would reveal much detail in and around the Pleiades. Venus passes close to the Pleiades only every 8 years. It was closer the night before, but alas, there were clouds! Some light cloud this night added the glow. This is a stack of multiple exposures of varying lengths: 2 minutes, 30 seconds, 10 seconds and 2 seconds, blended with masks to prevent Venus from being too blown out while still recording the stars. All were with the SharpStar 140mm PH apo refractor with the 0.73x flattener/reducer for f/4.8 and at ISO 400 with the Canon EOS Ra.
A wide-field image of the Coma-Virgo Galaxy Cluster (mostly in Virgo) including the Messier galaxies of Markarian’s Chain at right, and to Messier 59 and 60 at bottom left, adn up to M91 and M88 at top. The field is about 4 degrees high and 6 degrees wide. This is a stack of 8 x 8-minute exposures through the SharpStar 76mm EDPH refractor and with the SharpStar flattener/reducer for f/4.5, and with the Canon EOS Ra at ISO 800.
