Capricornus from Cherry Springs

This was taken early in the evening and at the start of the exposure there were some trees in the lower left corner of the frame which, after processing, have left some “interesting” colors. But I was reluctant to crop the image to remove this as there are other things happening due to a bit of haze and atmospheric glow (natural) near the horizon to play games with the color at the bottom anyway.

The “flashbulb” on the right edge of the frame is Jupiter, which Saturday just above and to the left. But Capricornus is centered quite nicely and relatively easy to identify, even in this crowded field. There was a bit of haze, or maybe light, high-level cirrus, that contributed to the glow around Jupiter and Saturn, and maybe some of the other glow in the image.

The last time I got a half-decent picture of this constellation was years ago from Shady Pines in Massachusetts. It was on film, there was a fair amount of sky glow, and I wasn’t very experienced at processing, so by the time I was done, I had managed to suppress the sky glow but at the expense of making the background unnaturally black. So I can live with the defects of this version a lot better.