Brad Perry’s beautiful composed Moonrise composite impressed the judges and garnered the Photo of the Week title on June 2, 2022.

Shooting from St. Andrews, New Brunswick, on May 21, 2022, Perry said the composite image of the waning gibbous Moon climbing over the St. Andrews’ harbour depicts the changes in the Moon’s colour as it rises.

The sequence is comprised of 74 photos captured in 15-second intervals between 2:11 a.m. and 2:29 a.m.

“A final longer exposure was captured to be used as a base image, then all photos were combined in Photoshop,” he wrote. “The shooting location and time were calculated using Planit Pro.”

Perry used a Sony A6000 camera sporting a Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III USM lens to capture the image. He shot 74 exposures at 0.8 seconds each for the Moon, and one ground shot at 30 seconds.

Honourable mention

The runner up this week was Chris Parfett’s image of the Iris Nebula, also known as Caldwell 4 or NGC 7023.

Located in Cepheus, the Iris Nebula is a reflection nebula, which means its colour comes from the scattered light of its central star. Located about 1,400 light-years away from Earth, the nebula stretches roughly six light-years across. NASA states that the nebula is of particular interest to scientists because of its colours. While the nebula is primarily blue, as most reflection nebulae are, there are other colours leaking through.

“While the Iris Nebula appears predominantly blue, it includes large filaments of deep red, indicating the presence of an unknown chemical compound likely based on hydrocarbons,” a NASA feature states. “Studying nebulae like this one helps astronomers learn more about the ingredients that combine to make stars.”

Using a ZWO ASI 2600MC Pro on a William Optics GT 102 (f/6.9), Parfett collected five hours and 30 minutes of data from his backyard in Bittern Lake, Alberta.

“Nights are getting short here at home, but I gathered 5.5 hours of OSC (one-shot colour) on this popular target over a couple nights,” he wrote.