The waning crescent Moon and Venus rising over the Peloncillo Mountains in New Mexico, on December 7, 2015. Comet Catalina is in the frame as well as a barely visible fuzzy spot at lower left. I shot this from the Quailway Cottage near Portal, New Mexico. Clouds added the coloured diffraction glows around the Moon and Venus. This is a stack of 5 exposures: 30, 8, 2, 0.5 and 1/8s, blended with luminosity masks as HDR would not blend images with such a large range of brightness and content, with the shortest exposures having almost no content execept for two bright objects! The camera was on the iOptron Sky-Tracker to follow the sky and keep the sky targets stationary and aligned, thus the blurred foreground. All with the 135mm lens at f/2.8 and Canon 6D at ISO 400.
Comet Catalina (C/2013 US10) in the pre-dawn sky, near Venus, on December 6, 2015 as shot from the Quailway Cottage near Portal Arizona, with the comet and Venus over the Peloncillo Mountains of New Mexico. The comet was just visible in small binoculars as a fuzzy spot. Here, in the photo, its two tails, ion and dust tail, are just visible in the bright moonlit sky (the waning crescent Moon was well above Venus this morning). Still, the comet is not as bright nor obvious, even in binoculars as one hoped! The field of view here is a little more than would appear in binoculars. This is a stack of 7 x 30 second tracked exposures with the ground coming from one of the exposures. All at ISO 1600 and f/3.2 with the 135mm telephoto lens and Canon 6D. The lens iris blades provided the diffraction spikes on Venus.
