I keep saying I'm not a night sky photographer, but I forgot my last post was about shooting the stars. This time it was moons. Last night's moon was big and full. A long side it you could see Jupiter. If you had a good set of eyes or some binoculars you could also see four of the moons surrounding the planet. At least that's what my wife said. It didn't work for me so I grabbed my camera and mounted my RF 800mm lens on it with a 1.4 extender giving me a 1,120mm lens with a fair amount of reach. The 800 also has image stabilization so Jupiter wasn't jumping all over in the viewfinder. The only downside was it is an f11 lens and that's it so I had to crank up the ISO to help my shutter speed a bit. This image took three exposures and a trip to Photoshop. First I had to expose or the not so bright moons in order to see them better in the picture. In doing so I blew out Jupiter. (That means i over exposed it losing all detail in the planet because it is a lot brighter than the moons.) For that reason I had to take another, reduced, exposure for Jupiter. Finally I photographed the moon which is literally a daylight exposure. When I took the images into Photoshop I started with a brand new file filled with black. Next I created the image of Jupiter and it's moons by copying the image of the over exposed Jupiter on top of the properly exposed image of Jupiter. I masked out the bad Jupiter revealing the good one but leaving the brighter moons. Then I copied my finished image of Jupiter and the moons on the Black image I created. Finally I composited one of my Earth's moon images and positioned it where I wanted. It's in the relative same position from Jupiter, but closer and larger for drama. It was my way of making a blah shot of Jupiter look a bit more interesting. I hope you enjoy it. As for me, I'm starting to enjoy the night sky.

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