The Golden Hour in New York for a Cruise Departure

In photography, the golden hour is the period of daytime shortly after sunrise or just before sunset, during which daylight is redder and softer than when the sun is higher in the sky. The golden hour is also sometimes called the magic hour, by photographers. Our cruise was delayed and that pushed the departure right in the Golden Hour for New York City's skyline and of course the Statue of Liberty. Having a waxing Moon hanging in the sky just above the skyline did not hurt either... Taking the photos from a rocking boat presented some challenges. However, challenges are what make successes sweeter. The moment was incredible. Sit back and hopefully you enjoy it at least half as much as we did.

The sunset in the west is reflecting perfectly off the windows of the buildings...

The new World Trade Center giving us a peak of the last bit of sunset.

Hello Moon and last bit of sunset

Hello Moon, Lady Liberty and tiniest touch of sunset

They warned us the torch did not light up very well... wrong tonight!

Goodbye Golden Hour and New York City

The Seven Sisters Star Cluster - Pleiades Nebula

 Messier 45 the Seven Sisters star cluster and Pleiades Nebula (NGC 1432) is the best know star cluster in the world, with much folk lore surrounding it. It is said it can be used as an eye test or light pollution test. If you can see seven (realistically five or six) individual stars your eyes are good, and the light pollution is not that bad. The cluster is only 444 light years away, however the radius of the cluster is 20 light years. 

In this one purposely left the stars in and processed them together - I wanted them big and brilliant. Normally I grab out the stars from the nebula, so they don't get overexposed as I stretch out the nebula in the histogram. Then I would normally process the stars separately and finally put them back in for the final photograph.

Bonus tip the starburst pattern you see in the stars is caused by the starlight getting diffracted as it strikes both the power cable and the USB cable of my astro-camera getting concentrated into spikes. If I had done a better job of curving the cables the light would have dispersed instead of "spiked".

Comet 2023 C3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS

 Took this comet shot last month. The anti-tail is barely visible in front of the comet. The comet at the time of the photos (25 shots of 4.02 seconds, total integration 100.5 seconds stacked) was 0.52 AU (Astronomical Units, 1 AU equals the average distance from the Sun to the Earth, in other words the comet was 46,477,905 miles away). The magnitude or brightness of the comet was 3.53 so technically it was visible to the naked eye but it's proximity to the horizon made really hard to see. This photo(s) was taken with my 9.25 inch diameter lens telescope. Bonus Tip: What is an anti-tail? As the comet speeds away from the Sun dust and ice are burned/fanned off the comet and form the coma and tail opposite the sun. Since the tail is formed directly opposite the Sun and now the comet is travelling away from the Sun the remaining dust is still lit up even though the comet has travelled past it in it's orbital plane.

In this second photo one day later you can no longer see the anti-tail but the ion tail is barely visible in the left-middle of the dust tail

Elephant Trunk Nebula IC 1396

Having been inspired by the Bubble Nebula, I thought I would try for the Elephant Trunk Nebula and again I was very surprised with the results. The Bubble is still my favorite, but this one comes in a nice second. It is about 1,565 light years away from Earth. The entire IC 1396 region is ionized (energized to visible light) by a massive star. I really enjoy the black patches of interstellar dust that is blocking out all background starlight (upper to mid right side of photo). This was a stack of 157 subs frames culled out of 217 frames, each frame lasting 30 seconds (108.5 minutes of integration time).

 

The Bubble Nebula Plus the Salt & Pepper Star Cluster

 The Bubble Nebula is a new one for me and at only 11,091 light years away it is still dim at only 10th magnitude. Down in the left corner is the Salt and Pepper open star cluster. It is only 500 light years away from us and is brighter at 6.9 magnitude. So the two are in light of sight for us but are not especially close to each other.