She's Got It ... Venus!

Not the best photo in the world but hey, it's Venus in a waxing gibbous phase.  I've been watching it slowly rise higher in the western sky since just after Christmas and I've seen it in close proximity to Jupiter and the Moon.  Hopefully I'll manage a better shot when it's higher still.

Waxing Crescent Moon

Unfortunately the weather has been very poor in recent weeks and this is the first time I've seen the moon in ages. The cloud cover meant that I couldn't see the thin sliver of moon which appears after a new moon and so I'll just have to be content with this crescent which is a few days old now.

Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here - Dante's Inferno!

Well, may be not quite, but when I process an Ha-rich image of the Orion Nebula like the one above, it always makes me think of it.  This is a starless version, which some people prefer to images which are covered in stars, often overpowering the delicate features of the nebula. Personally, I like some stars in an image as without them I think it seems a little artificial.  So I'll often do a bit of star reduction to make them as little less dominant and distracting. Here's a version with some stars and :

And here's a much wider version showing the Running Man Nebula a little better:

Howling at The Wolf Moon

As I have said many times here in my blog and in several other online places, the full moon is my least favourite time to take moon shots.  Because the sun is pointing straight at it (and thus lighting up the whole nearside of the moon) the light is very fast with no shadows and little detail.  It takes a bit of work to bring out some of the detail and it doesn't always work. Having said that, it doesn't stop me from trying!

I personally think that the full moon is best when used as part of a composition, something like this shot on the previous day.  The trouble then is finding a good location for some foreground interest or scenes value.  I'm still looking for that.

Venus and Jupiter Meet

Venus and Jupiter were close in the western sky tonight.  Well they looked close by eye, but when a photograph is taken with a long telephoto lens they appear to be quite a long way apart.  The whole thing is an illusion anyway and in reality they are millions of miles apart and Jupiter is 10x bigger that Venus.  This is also true of many the stars we see in our constellations - they seem to form a 2D pattern in the sky, when in 3D reality they are nowhere near each other.

Daytime Waxing Gibbous Moon

This shot was taken whilst it was still light in the 'Blue Hour'. There is some good detail in the lower right quadrant but not much along the terminator line as this is mainly over two large Maria.