2022-04-14 Moon Glow

My attempt at astrophotography during a summer full moon in the northern hemisphere.

The location is deep in the fjords of Sogn, a place that usually gets a Bortle Scale Class 2 sky. The weather was good, and I was looking forward to shooting under these excellent conditions. I did, however, quickly realize my rookie mistake of not checking the Moon's phase.

I was shooting with a Pentax Takumar 50mm, aiming at a 7s shutter speed to maximize exposure. The following image, taken at f/2.8, shows the Moon flaring up like the sun during midday. This is not ideal.

An Attempt

Taken back by the sheer brightness of the Moon I didn't pick out any target in particular, but I did want to capture at least something since I was out there.

• Location
  • Name: Sogn, Vestland Norway
  • Lat Long: 61.38, 06.75
  • Datetime: April 14th, ~23:00h
  • Bortle Scale: Class 2
  • Moon Phase: Full
• Gear
  • Camera: Canon Eos 700D
  • Lens: Pentax Takumar 50mm f/1.4
• Exposure
  • Aperture: f/2.8
  • Focal Length: 50mm
  • Shutter Speed: 7/1s
• Stack
  • Software: DeepSkyStacker
  • Light Frames: 100
  • Total Exposure: 10min 30s (90%)

The stacked image has been manually processed in GIMP using n color-preserving arcsinh x100 stretch.

Content-wise I more or less pointed the camera randomly to the sky. After much searching, I found that I've captured Giausar, K Dra, and Thuban in Draco. Can you see it? Too bad about the rogue cloud.

I think the Takumar 50mm did a great job considering the conditions, and I'm optimistic about its performance under the same skies minus the Moon.

Sidenote

While the Canon was capturing the image(s) above, I also shot this image using my Fuji X-T1. It is taken just before midnight, and I thought it looked interesting in a weird out-of-focus way. Looks almost retro.