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#telephoto

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Comet C/2024 G3 very low in bright evening twilight as seen from the mountains of southern New Mexico at 9,000 feet. (Thursday, 16 January)

First photo is the comet as first seen in very bright twilight. 200mm lens, fixed tripod.

Second photo is about seven minutes later, just before it set behind cirrus and trees. 400mm lens.

Third photo is another three minutes later. The comet is gone.

Or is it?

Fourth photo is the third photo, but processed to flatten the sky gradient, converted to grayscale, and a very aggressive contrast boost. Traces of the tail can be seen below the band of cirrus clouds. Perhaps even some faint traces above the band of cirrus?

Full moon, shown in high contrast in near infrared.

A full moon lacks a terminator...that portion of the moon where the sun angle is very low and shadows are very long. (That's a wonderful way to see the moon's vertical terrain, even gentle rolling hills.) The region of the terminator is much darker than the rest of the moon's surface, so when the moon is not full I can't boost contrast much or I'll push the faint terminator terrain into invisible black.

But tonight I can boost contrast so that the new/fresh impact ejecta is white, and the darkest parts of the maria are dark gray.

The disk of the moon is littered with impact ejecta, large and small. To my eye tonight it looks like a cracked and fractured crystal globe.

The second photo is a zoom/crop showing part of the moon's limb where shadow detail is present.

Four views of Venus and Spica in evening twilight.

First photo is a telephoto lens view. Brilliant Venus is at the top of the frame and the blue-white star Spica is a bit below center. The twilight sky gradient goes from blue to orange and I framed the shot to capture more of the orange sky below Spica.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spica

The three other shots are wider and wider views that capture more and more stars as the sky gets darker. (The sky can't get very dark because of the full moon.)