The Full "Cold" Moon of December 29, 2020 rising over the Badlands of Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, on the Red Deer River, here at left. The last light of the setting Sun was breaking through briefly, illuminating the far river bank, as the Moon rose into the dark shadow of the Earth and pink "Belt of Venus" glow in the upper atmosphere. Despite being full, the Moon rose this night about 30 minutes before sunset, allowing this lighting. The Moon was about 4 hours before being officially Full at this time. This is a single image with the Sigma 50mm lens on the Canon EOS Ra taken as part of a 500-frame time-lapse.
The still close pairing of Jupiter and Saturn in the evening twilight over the Bow River Valley, in southern Alberta, taken from the Siksika First Nations land near Blackfoot Crossing on December 28, 2020. The night was very clear with brilliant twilight colours. The waxing Moon was providing some of the foreground illumination. This is an HDR panorama of 3 x 3 panels: 3 segments, each with 3 exposures of 2, 4, and 8 seconds, to retain the sky colours but bring out the landscape details. Merged with Adobe Camera Raw. Shot with the Sigma 50mm lens on the red-sensitive Canon EOS Ra camera at ISO 100.
The pairing of Jupiter and Saturn in the evening twilight, the day after their closest conjunction, taken here on December 22, 2020. This was from home, as a snowstorm in the previous 24 hours had made the roads too poor to travel. Brighter Jupiter is to the left of Saturn and is pulling away from Saturn here, but they were still separated by only 10 arc minutes this evening. The inset shows the view through a telescope with the Galilean moons of Jupiter visible and three of the moons of Saturn. Other points are field stars. The background image is a stack of 6 untracked exposures to smooth the motion of the clouds, but the planets come from just one of the exposures, all being 0.8-second shots with the 85mm Rokinon lens at f/4 and with the Canon 6D MkII at ISO 200. The closeup image is a stack of six 4-second exposures (to bring out the moons) taken about 5:45 pm local MST. All were through the Celestron SE6 Schmidt-Cassegrain at f/10 (so 1500mm focal length) on the Sky-Watcher EQM-35 mount tracking the sky but only roughly polar aligned, and through the Canon EOS Ra camera at ISO 800, and cropped in. The planets' low altitude blurred their images from poor seeing. Atmospheric dispersion adds to colour fringing.
