Jupiter and Uranus

The 23rd of September was the harvest moon, which was pretty spectacular but I was more interested in the close approach of Jupiter and Uranus being easy to spot. Here is my first attempt to get a picture of Jupiter...and as an added bonus, Uranus. Click through to my Flickr site to see the notes.



I don't have a tracker-just my Canon rebel and my not so hot 300mm telephoto lens, so the trick is to get a long enough exposure to render the planets and Jupiter's 3 visible moons and not get any streaking from the Earth's rotation. Also the moon was just off picture at the top.

Thursday night was rainy but last night and early this morning I went out again and got this shot:



The moon was much further in the sky from Jupiter so I didn't have to do any post processing to this image. Also the moon's are much sharper.

Of course I didn't ignore our moon but full moons don't make good shots if you are interested in lunar detail-but I did have fun taking pictures of the wonderful shadows cast by our moon on the 23rd.



Note there was enough light to get color from the plants and pots.