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Taming a 100% very bright Moon

Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2026 4:56 pm
by turfpit
Last night I was at last treated to some clear skies. First up was M33. I ran a test exposure of 30x10s with an L filter on my Atik 314L+ camera. A single frame was washed out, even though the FOV was well away from the Moon. A change of plan and a switch to an Ha filter for the night.

fighting_the_Moon.JPG
fighting_the_Moon.JPG (116.75 KiB) Viewed 992 times

This was the result from a 10x450s Ha stack.
Ha_drizzle1x.jpg
Ha_drizzle1x.jpg (850.26 KiB) Viewed 992 times

Next target was the Double Cluster. I captured this as a 2-panel mosaic with the intention of capturing the Ha areas outside the clusters. First PixInsight mosaic for me, built using PhotoMetricMosaic. The original is 4330x1888, scaled to 40% for the Forum.

Mosaic_scaled_40percent.jpg
Mosaic_scaled_40percent.jpg (968.46 KiB) Viewed 992 times

The last image was IC434, The Horsehead Nebula.

IC434_Ha-10x450s_scaled-50percent.jpg
IC434_Ha-10x450s_scaled-50percent.jpg (787.5 KiB) Viewed 992 times

The 3 images were calibrated/integrated in PixInsight but no further processing has been carried out.
This lays the groundwork for some RGB captures of the 3 objects on the next suitable night (hopefully moon free).

Dave

Re: Taming a 100% very bright Moon

Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2026 12:26 am
by StarzSkies
Great picture Dave!
One if the targets on my list.
Frank

Re: Taming a 100% very bright Moon

Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2026 1:06 am
by turfpit
Thanks Frank.

Dave

Re: Taming a 100% very bright Moon

Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2026 2:58 pm
by timh
Ha seems a great option to get decent images under too-bright skies - there is usually something of interest to see and tbh I often like just casual EEA observing that way without really bothering always to capture stuff into a saved image.

Re: Taming a 100% very bright Moon

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2026 12:05 pm
by turfpit
Tim

Ha implies long exposure therefore guiding required. I got caught out (once) when imaging too near the moon, the guider was swamped and kept losing guide stars. I try to keep 90° away from the moon now which seems to have provided results. When the full moon gets near the meridian it is time to sleep.

Dave