venus mars (moon) conjunction 2021

The conjunction of venus and mars on ~7/12/21 made it to many astronomy calendars, including mine.  Planetary conjunctions are typically scenic visual events for the unaided eye.  That being said, this one was pretty unimpressive (i could not see mars), but it gave me an opportunity to practice/learn with a conventional camera.  

Here it is the day before closest approach with the moon nicely aligned (Mars is the tiny dot just above the tree on the left):

mars-venus (moon) conjunction 7/11/21 20:38 PM pacific

Close up of the red planet

Here's closest approach the next day. mars is a tiny speck just to the left and below venus, lower right:

mars-venus conjunction 7/12/21 20:33 Pacific 

Image details
nikon D850
AF-S DX NIKKOR 16-85mm F3.5-5.6G ED VR 

eastbluff, CA 7/11,12/2021

for the bottom image i captured close up videos of the moon at 2 exposures, one very bright with earthglow, the other capturing the bright detail, but no earthglow.  I made a composite of the two, preserving detail and showing earthglow, and placed it in the final image in which the moon was clipped...

...it made no difference at the scale in the image above, but it was an interesting exercise :)

rising moon refracted

i decided to image the last supermoon of this year as it rose from the beach at corona del mar:

Moon rise 6/24/21 Corona Del Mar

you'll note it's quite distorted.  as the moon is rising, the light is traveling tangentially thru a thick layer of atmosphere which causes distortion as turbulence bends (refracts) the light.  on this particular evening there was so much distortion, it was impossible to get a round looking moon as it rose.  there are basically two approaches to this problem: 1. wait for the moon to rise higher and capture a sharper image or 2. embrace the distortion.  To put it another way (as alan smallbone often writes): "One photo out of focus is a mistake, ten photos out of focus are an experimentation, one hundred photos out of focus are a style."

here's a great shot rob middleton took with me at cdm, showing off the zoom of his nikon coolpix P900 camera:

love the iconic palm tree next the gigantic deformed moon. 

Here's the other approach: an image captured as the moon rose higher.  it's a composite of a long exposure for the landscape, and a close up video stacking and processing 1,000 extremely short exposures:

more "experimentation":

Here's an animation of the rising moon.  it almost looks like it's passing thru an inversion layer:

Interestingly, when you first see the moon rising, it's actually below the horizon--the rays are bent by the atmosphere, changing the apparent position.  Here's a website explaining all sorts of related phenomena, including the green flash: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/atmos/mirage.html

This close up shows a green fringe at the top and red at the bottom, again due to atmospheric refraction:

Another gigantic moon and palm tree shot from rob:

a few test shots from the night before. had to wait for the moon to clear the cloud layer (it was still pretty super):

pastel moonrise 6/23/21

Image details

nikon D850

AF-S DX NIKKOR 16-85mm F3.5-5.6G ED VR 

6/24/21

corona del mar, CA

rob middleton's images:

nikon coolpix P900