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It was designed to be a fun experiment in which I tried to photograph the minor planet Pluto. Normally it is too faint to find with my camera/lens setup. However, Pluto and Mars passed very close to each other on 23 March 2020 making it easier to find one based on the location of the other. Clouds forced me to shoot this image a day later on 24 March 2020, when they were farther apart.
I used Stellarium as a guide to hopping from one star to another until I finally located Pluto. As a magnitude 14.3 object, this was at the extreme edge of what could be resolved with my Nikon 180mm AIS ƒ/2.8 manual focus lens shot wide open.
Images were shot at ƒ/2.8, ISO 1600, 30s. The best 24 images were stacked to reduce noise. Post processing included large values of Unsharpen Mask to help show Pluto -- with the undesired side effect of creating halos around the brighter stars.
It was fun. Maybe I should buy a telescope!
Oh, one final point. Once again I was photo-bombed by Starlink.
Photographer's website:
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