City - Half Moon Bay State - CALIFORNIA Country - United States
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This is one of dozens of pictures I took of Mars during Fall 2003. I used only the zoom on my camera, and this one is cropped for more detail on Mars. I don't know how the blue shadow on the left was created--I'm hoping someone can tell me. I took other photos the same night without it, but from different angles.
Hi!....Anne : Excellent Sky Photograph!...Anne the Blue Spot, is Commonly Caused By Specular Reflection within the Lens! Best Regards: Jeff. Alberta, Canada. Thank you for your Comment, Anne!..Nice to Make your Acquaintance!...Jeff!!!
Thanks very much for your very informative reply. I was using autofocus--I love my fuji camera, but it is so complex, it's taken me ages to figure out how it all works. I just recently figured out how to use the manual settings! (Okay, that is lame, I know.) I live about a half mile from the Pacific Ocean so there is usually some level of moisture in the sky. As you can probably tell from the moon, there were at least some light clouds that night. The "bloat" you describe actually explains why, when I drove to the Sierras one night to get some clearer pictures of Mars, the planet looked so much smaller in all of the shots I took up there. I just thought I had messed up with the camera again!
Thanks for your time and generosity in explaining this to me.
I took a few minutes to look at your portfolio -- lovely work.
I was afraid that that was the moon, in which case your image is quite out of focus. Either that, or atmospheric blurring caused your image of the planet to bloat. The size of the moon reflection seems to indicate focus, though. Mars at its largest was about 25 to 27 seconds of arc in diameter. The moon is about 30 minutes of arc in diameter, so the moon should appear about 60x the diameter of Mars.
If you use autofocus at astronomical targets, you will usually get out of focus images.
To avoid the internal reflections, you need to put the bright object into the center of image. This is a little unimaginative as far as composition goes, but it will minimize the flaring from internal reflections. I got one of those reflections in this shot: http://homepage.mac.com/tarashnat/astrophoto/0035-16.html of the Moon and Jupiter.
Thanks for the information! Do you have any tips on avoiding it? I've gotten a similar reflection a couple of other times when I photograph sunsets, and it usually kind of wrecks the picture. This one I think is kind of cool, though.
I took this on September 8, 2003. The bright light is the full moon (or close to it); the small orange disc is Mars. I live in a town on the Pacific Coast just south of San Francisco which is almost always foggy during September. I was so lucky to be able to see Mars, let alone photograph it! There were a number of nights last fall when I was able to get some fairly good shots from my deck. I was stunned to get anything in a picture without a telescope, let alone the detail I got on some of them. It would have been even cooler with a telescope.
The shot in your link is excellent, and I especially liked the photos of Jupiter and Venus on your website. Thank you for sharing them with me.
The blue is an internal (lens/camera) reflection of the bright light source. By the way, what is that bright light? Is that Mars, or is the smaller orange disc Mars? Which night was this taken?
Here is one of my Mars images from last year: http://www.usefilm.com/image/190750.html . There are more on my web site at http://homepage.mac.com/tarashnat/astrophoto/ccdplanet.html . These are taken with a web cam through telescopes.
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