Conjunction, Moon, Venus, Playides & Haydes. 19th April

For anyone interested....
There is a nice conjunction taking place twords the end of April.
The Moon (thin crescent), Venus, The Playides & Haydes will be in or
around the same neck of the woods around the 19th of April.

This should afford an opportunity to any visual observers or astrophotographers a chance to catch a nice scene.

(bellow is a screen grab from Stellarium of the night in question)

Yep, looks like a nice photo-op Frank. Though what the map doesn't show is that it will be quite hard to get contrast due to the twilight - Venus is bright enough to be seen but M45 will be much harder.

Clear skies,

Paul.

Yip.. there in lays the challenge!

What will be difficult here is their respective magnitudes and trying to capture different levels of detail from the brilliant Moon and Venus to the much dimmer Pleaides. The best thing to do here would be to capture a range of exposures.

I'm hoping to catch some earthshine.
The thought had also crossed my mind to do multi exposures and
the combine them to show all the objects...
we'll see...

Getting the exposure and contrast right for all the different objects - 2 clusters, Venus and the Moon, and the background stars, so that they all show up perfectly will be pretty much impossible... so why not cheat a little and photograph that region with and without the Moon (two shots a couple of hours apart) with one exposure aimed at capturing the best detail on the moon. In PaintShop or PhotoShop, subtract the difference between the two images to loose the moon in both (but leave the stars and Venus) and then drop a cut-out of the Moon back in, in its correct position.

A little creativity can produce beautiful results... and have appeared in the gallery pages of Kiss&Tel many times!

Phil.