Gibbous Moon and Saturn

saturn with moon

Usually astrophotography takes a lot of work, but this particular shot was comparatively easy, and contained a hidden gem.

On December 10, 2006 there was a triple conjunction of the planets Jupiter, Mercury, and Mars. Unfortunately, I could not capture the triple conjunction, recall the planets being too low on the horizon, so I snapped a couple photos of the Moon and a star, approximately 6:30am in the cold air. After reviewing the photo, I realized the “star” by the Moon was actually Saturn, so they were close as well!

It ended up being one of my favorites, so posted it on Flickr.

Here is the original and another with a blowup of Saturn.

Equipment used: Meade 10″ LX200GPS telescope, Meade Series 4000 Broadband Nebula Filter, Meade F/6.3 Focal Reducer, Nikon D100 camera with ISO 1600. 

Processing: Nikon View 6 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0, combined 2 photos at 1/1000s and 1/25s shutter/exposure.