Amazing Sky by Alan Dyer

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Waxing Moon and M44 (May 10, 2019).jpg

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The 5-day-old waxing crescent Moon near the Beehive star cluster, Messier 44, in Cancer on the evening of May 10, 2019, set in the deep blue twilight sky, and with Earthshine still visible on the dark side of the Moon.

From eastern North America this evening the Moon appeared in front of the Beehive, but by the time darkness fell out west the Moon had moved east of the Beehive by a moon diameter.

Technical:
This is an HDR stack of 6 exposures for the lunar disk, tone-mapped in Photomatix Pro using Fusion/Natural Blend, with the sky from a single exposure, the longest in the set — HDRs can’t ever align and blend the Moon and stars accurately, as the Moon is shifting against the star background slightly.

Taken through the Astro-Physics Traveler 105mm refractor at f/6 and with the Canon 6D MkII at ISO 400, and with exposures from 1 second in two stop increments to 1/500.

As a further note, I tried AuroraHDR 2018 on this and it failed miserably, producing a very noisy image. Photoshop HDR produced a lot of edge artifacts, and luminosity masking was going to be tough to blend, naturally, so I gave Photomatix a go — it worked but only for the Moon itself.
Copyright
© 2019 Alan Dyer
Image Size
6240x4160 / 3.3MB
www.amazingsky.photoshelter.com
Contained in galleries
Messier Objects, Moon & Sun, Conjunctions
The 5-day-old waxing crescent Moon near the Beehive star cluster, Messier 44, in Cancer on the evening of May 10, 2019, set in the deep blue twilight sky, and with Earthshine still visible on the dark side of the Moon. <br /> <br /> From eastern North America this evening the Moon appeared in front of the Beehive, but by the time darkness fell out west the Moon had moved east of the Beehive by a moon diameter. <br /> <br /> Technical:<br /> This is an HDR stack of 6 exposures for the lunar disk, tone-mapped in Photomatix Pro using Fusion/Natural Blend, with the sky from a single exposure, the longest in the set — HDRs can’t ever align and blend the Moon and stars accurately, as the Moon is shifting against the star background slightly. <br /> <br /> Taken through the Astro-Physics Traveler 105mm refractor at f/6 and with the Canon 6D MkII at ISO 400, and with exposures from 1 second in two stop increments to 1/500. <br /> <br /> As a further note, I tried AuroraHDR 2018 on this and it failed miserably, producing a very noisy image. Photoshop HDR produced a lot of edge artifacts, and luminosity masking was going to be tough to blend, naturally, so I gave Photomatix a go — it worked but only for the Moon itself.