PDA

View Full Version : Moon and Jupiter Scape



Patrick Sparkman
01-22-2013, 08:16 PM
I went to bed last night, and suddenly awakened realizing that I had forgotten to photograph the Moon/Jupiter close encounter. I jumped out of bed, got dressed, and grabbed the 600II, 1DX, and tripod and went out the front door. We had a nicely clear night, and I was able to get a good shot showing the moon and Jupiter. I did this same shot a few months ago, but the moon was full, and not as interesting. Also, I processed this one in DPP, then did noise reduction with Neat Image using Arash's guide, and finished with final adjustments and sharpening in Lightroom.

This is about 60% of the full image. If anyone has issues with the sharpness of the 600II with 2X III, look at this image.

Tripod mounted Canon 600II , 2XIII, 1DX, 1/100 sec, f10, ISO 400, DPP, CS6, NeatImage, Lightroom

I am glad that I got out of bed as they are much farther apart tonight, and the sky is not as clear. Sometimes it pays to get out of bed! Hope this is the best place for this image.

Roman Kurywczak
01-23-2013, 09:37 AM
Hey Patrick,
Very sharp on the moon. It always pays to pay to get out of bed! I am debating Jupiter.......only because of its size and distance from the moon but all in all.....very well done!

Faraaz Abdool
01-24-2013, 02:13 PM
Patrick - I love this and wish I had taken it! I saw this close encounter from the window of a plane flying back to Trinidad. Got home at 2 in the morning and was way too tired to even remember that this was happening. Love how you can see Jupiter's moons too. Excellent sharpness as well.

Jerry van Dijk
01-25-2013, 11:26 AM
Spectacular capture Patrick! One of the sharpest and contrast rich image I've seen of the moon so far. Jupiter and its moons add a great attraction and makes this one really stand out! I'm a bit in doubt about the bluish color of the planet. I've seen it quite often through various telescopes and can't remember ever seeing it so blue. Roger Clark reminds us on his site that the moon is actually not grey but yellowish, so maybe a white balance adjustment would be in order if you're after true color representation.

Roger Clark
01-25-2013, 11:48 AM
Hi Patrick,
Very nice and very sharp image. A couple of things. How did you get the moons to show up so nicely? I had to do two exposures, one longer one for the Jupiter's moons. Jupiter is too blue on my (uncalibrated) laptop. Jupiter is yellow with reds/browns. The Moon too may be too bluish; it too should be on the warm side (the reflectance of the Moon is reddish).

Roger

Patrick Sparkman
01-26-2013, 11:43 AM
Thanks for the comments!

Roger, thanks for posting as I hoped you would take a look at my image. I did two exposures also to get the moons to show up the way they do to the naked eye. Then processed both images in DPP, put them into two layers in PS6, aligned them and used a quickmask of the brighter moons in the darker overall image. The exposure used for the overall image does show the moons if you really crank up the exposure in DPP, but they were still pretty faint so I used the brighter exposure.

I am glad you picked up on the overall color tone, the image is a little "cold" overall so your monitor is fine. I don't know why I did not pick up on it myself. The auto white balance in the camera chose 4200 degrees which is much too cold. I warmed it in this new version here and it looks much better. Then I did a selection area in Lightroom around jupiter and the moons and warmed them a little more. Hopefully this looks better. at some point I will go back to the original RAWs and start over with the correct white balance. This warmed version looks much better to me and much closer to the view with my eye through the viewfinder.

Robert Amoruso
01-30-2013, 12:44 PM
Like repost. Moon looks stellar (pun intended). Great sharpness.