Moon and Pleiades Conjunction March 2008

I popped out last night with just my static tripod and camera to try and get some shots of the conjunction of the moon and pleiades.  I spent about 30 minutes outside in the wind, which was making the camera move.  So I ended up taking about 50 shots in total.

Unfortunately as the moon was so bright getting the faintness of the pleiades with the brightness of the moon was very difficult. I took all the shots at ISO800 on my Canon 300mm lens with varying exposure times.

Below is the best I got, which is pretty bad, I think I would have been better taking the photos of the pleiades  and the moon separately and then just putting the scene together in a photo editor program.

The only good thing to come out of the 30 minutes was this shot of just the moon. It’s quite amazing what a 300mm lens can do, and it shows you don’t need a telescope in order to take nice images of the moon.