ASTROPHOTOS

 As my town has been blessed, for the most part anyway, with some clear nights, I took the opportunity to take a few photos of the night sky in my back garden.

Although  my lenses aren't ideal and don't have very low f stops, meaning  they don't take full advantage of the limited available light, I did manage to get a few decent shots in spite of the light pollution.

The Moon is in a waxing gibbous phase, which is great for showing up the shadows on the terminator line. A full Moon doesn't always produce the best photos as the reflected sunlight tends to wash out some of the surface detail.  It's still pretty bright, though ,so the camera's ISO setting needs to be very low to get the exposure right.

Here's a photo I took of the Moon in waning gibbous phase. I did a little post-processing on this to enhance the detail of the Tycho  Crater and its rays.

This is a 4 second exposure showing an airliner crossing the night sky. The bright object is the over- exposed Moon.

A 10 second shot of the night sky with an over exposed Moon in the right-hand top corner. The photo, shows the constellation of Orion in the left hand corner rising above the trees, and the constellation of Taurus just above. The bright  star above that is Jupiter, and above that at the edge is the Pleiades star cluster. 

A close up of the belt and sword of Orion. Spot the Orion Nebula!

Photos of Venus and Mars

Finally, as mist began to rise up I decided to call it a night.

Keep watching the skies!