The Moon – Bodie Lighthouse – Jupiter

Here is my one image for the summer of 2020; I don’t count the pitiful comet image and the terminator of the Moon while I was waiting for the no-show comet.

Gwen (wife) and I took a five day trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, one of our favorite places to get away from it all (about two and a half hour drive). There was only enough room in the Jeep for my Canon T3i, the 16 mm Rokinon lens and the Platinum Plus 5800D tripod.

Plan (A) was going to be a star trail with Cape Hatteras lighthouse in the foreground but looking at the lighthouse on Google Map there isn’t enough room for that.

Plan (B) was going to be a Milky Way image with Bodie Lighthouse in the foreground (lots of ground around that one) until I checked Stellarium and saw the 90% Moon was going to be out! No Milky Way this weekend!

You may know my first rule for astrophotography: “When the Moon is out – shoot the Moon.”

So Gwen and I braved the largest mosquitoes we have ever seen and had to keep to the boardwalk as the sign said “Stay on the boardwalk due to several venomous snakes in the grass and marsh.” OKAY!!!

Gwen called out when the light of the lighthouse was coming around (one revolution every 27.5 seconds) while I kept changing the settings for the best image. We were moving as fast as we could since we both gave a pint of blood last month to the Red Cross and the mosquitoes wanted another.

This one was shot 8/30/2020 at 7:56 pm, with the Canon T3i and the Rokinon 16 mm lens. Something I learned here from better imagers than I am, was to up the ISO, this image was 1600 ISO, 1/80 second, and f/4. The Moon is easy to see on the left of the lighthouse and little Jupiter is on the right.