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John Benfatti
Bronx, New York 10471
03/17/2020
04:30 am

Equipment Details:

Nikon D60 Nikkor 55 ~ 300 mm lens. Exposure 1" f5.6

Post-processing Details:

Exposure balanced and labels added with photoshop

Image Details:

I woke up early March 17, 2020 in anticipation of the gathering of the Moon and three planets. I checked the skies and from my 15th floor terrace at SkyView on the Hudson in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. I saw that the Moon was already rising.
I quickly set up my tripod and Nikon D60 digital camera. I also woke my daughter who wanted to experience the event.
At first, the Moon, Jupiter and Mars were easily visible. Saturn was much fainter so I started making multiple one second exposures with my 18 ~ 55mm zoom lens set at f5.6. Switched to my 55 ~ 200mm lens at the same exposure settings.
My daughter has a Nikon D5200 with a Nikkor 55 ~ 300 mm lens and
She asked if I would like to borrow her lens. I said sure. She got her lens and I got my 10 x 50 binoculars. With the binoculars I was able to locate Saturn and adjust my field of view to include it.
I continued to make exposures as the clouds started to roll in.
I believe the clouds added to the composition which originally included the skyline but with the longer focal length I was no longer able to include the skyline.
My daughter help enhance the image and add the labels of the celestial objects with Photoshop on her computer.