Hello all,
A friend reminded me Monday night that the Moon was occulting the Pleiades, and if I could, could I try capturing the event?
"Try" being the keyword, I set out to try with my ST-8 and H-alpha filter. I expected the Moon to bloom quite heartily with 2-second exposures, which was what I kept my exposure times at in hopes of bringing out the stars.
After some stretching of the image, some specks did indeed appear. I'm not 100% convinced that I really captured stars around the Moon, but in case I did, here is a composite image.
Telescope: Takahashi FSQ-106
Camera: SBIG ST-8XE
Filter: Custom Scientific 4.5nm H-alpha filter
The stars are 2-second exposures and were brought out with DDP in Maxim. The Moon is a 0.01 (or whatever the ST-8's minimum exposure time is) through the same filter, shot seconds apart from the stars exposure. I got a little fanciful and expanded the stars (if that's what they are) a little bit to emphasize them further.
What's helping convince me that they really are stars is their profile (they don't have the sharp edges of hot pixels) and they look somewhat like the Pleiades stars around the Moon when I shot this. If I did indeed capture the stars, Electra is the brightest star to the right of the Moon in this image.
Eric
A friend reminded me Monday night that the Moon was occulting the Pleiades, and if I could, could I try capturing the event?
"Try" being the keyword, I set out to try with my ST-8 and H-alpha filter. I expected the Moon to bloom quite heartily with 2-second exposures, which was what I kept my exposure times at in hopes of bringing out the stars.
After some stretching of the image, some specks did indeed appear. I'm not 100% convinced that I really captured stars around the Moon, but in case I did, here is a composite image.
Telescope: Takahashi FSQ-106
Camera: SBIG ST-8XE
Filter: Custom Scientific 4.5nm H-alpha filter
The stars are 2-second exposures and were brought out with DDP in Maxim. The Moon is a 0.01 (or whatever the ST-8's minimum exposure time is) through the same filter, shot seconds apart from the stars exposure. I got a little fanciful and expanded the stars (if that's what they are) a little bit to emphasize them further.
What's helping convince me that they really are stars is their profile (they don't have the sharp edges of hot pixels) and they look somewhat like the Pleiades stars around the Moon when I shot this. If I did indeed capture the stars, Electra is the brightest star to the right of the Moon in this image.
Eric
Attached Image:
