Luna, Cancer, Beehive, and Venus

Image Critiques
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Luna, Cancer, Beehive, and Venus
Luna, Cancer, Beehive, and Venus1500×1000 346 KB

Critique Style: Standard

The photographer is looking for thoughtful feedback on the image as a whole, especially around the areas noted below.

Feedback Focus: Artistic + Technical

About This Image

This past couple of weeks the sky has had some interesting alignments. First Jupiter and Venus were just about 2 degrees apart from each other on June 9th. Then the new crescent was in Gemini, as in my last post. Then moon was between Jupiter and Mercury on June 16th, I failed to photograph that at a good time and it was too dark. Then yesterday, June 17th, the moon was in Cancer and close to both the Beehive star cluster and to Venus. All within 8 degrees along the Ecliptic. I was set to make a photo of the alignment, when about 7 pm the fog rolled in covering my area. My daughter and son-in-law were visiting from North Carolina and they were scheduled to leave for the airport in San Francisco at 8 pm. I was not planning on going to see them off, but when the fog cut off my area, I decided to take a chance and go with them to the airport with the hope that the sky would be clear there. My bet paid off.

It was a little later than I wanted when I made the photos needed, around 9:15 pm, I was hoping to photograph just before 9 PM so that I would have less contrast in the sky and a little more color, but I think it turned out ok. The moon of course is in the ULC. The two main stars in Cancer are just below and the left of the moon and then above and to the right near the top edge. The grouping of stars in the middle of the frame is the Beehive star cluster, and then Venus with aperture spikes is in the LRC.

Feedback Requested

Thoughts and feedback of any sort much appreciated.

There was some glare from the airport parking garage lights that seemed to encroach on the bottom edge, is it to distracting?

Technical Details

Camera: NIKON D850
Lens: 400mm f/5.6
Focal length: 400mm
Shutter speed: 1/30s for the detail in the crescent, 1" for the sky, stars in the Beehive and Venus.
Aperture: f/8
ISO: 400

The two frames were adjusted in ACR, and denoised, then composited in PS

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WOW! And from the parking-lot-from-hell! (Aside from its attributes for astrophotography…) And the detail in the moon (and especially the earthshine) is amazing – I thought you had to be on a 16,000 ft mountain in Chile to photograph that so clearly! I love the spikes on Venus and the Beehive is in the perfect position! Wonderful pinpoint stars for 1 sec!

I wonder if you have tried to bring out the stars more – on a separate masked layer.

I was ready but up here the fog rolled in before sunset.

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@Diane_Miller I have been amazingly surprised at the sensitivity of the D850 sensor. It has a knack for picking out stars during civil twilight. I did mask and brighten the stars separately. Most of the work was trying to tame the bloom around the moon from the 1 sec exposure. The 1 sec exposure was for the earthshine and stars. 1 sec is the longest I can go with that 400mm lens before I start seeing trailing when the subjects are near the western or easter horizon.

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Ah, yes – bloom around bright subjects like the moon… I assume it’s from stray light bouncing around in the lens, and it seems to be equally bad for all lenses. I was hoping it would be better for my refractor telescope (a simplified telephoto lens) but as far as I’ve seen so far, it’s the same.

Excellent job of fixing it here!

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On a similar note to picking up stars before we can see them, I’m always amazed how early I can polar align – well before I can see Polaris, much less the very small stars around it that the camera uses to dial in its aim to under 1 arcminute – with just 1-2 sec exposures.