After the 2012 RAF Waddington Air Display, I felt that my Nikkor 55-300mm lens just didn’t have the reach or quality that I needed. The replacement (Sigma 150-500mm) is an excellent lens and was sharp enough to resolve Jupiter’s larger moons, at a distance of approximately 608,800,000 kilometres (about as close as Jupiter gets to the Earth).
Click on a photo to view it at full-size. Includes some photos of our own moon…
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- On a long exposure, I noticed some dim streaks running parallel to the bright one that Jupiter had produced
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- The moon also looks quite nice through the Sigma
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- The moon also looks quite nice through the Sigma. At full zoom, the contrast is reduced a little.
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- On a shorter exposure, these streaks resolved as the Galilean moons. The big blob is of course, Jupiter.
I saw a very bright blob in the sky, near the moon, and guessed that it was probably a planet. I took a few photos of it out of curiosity, wondering how much detail my lens could resolve. I didn’t manage to get any nice “marble” photos of the planet, but did notice several “streaks” following the planet in my longer exposures. After taking some short exposures of them, I realised that I was seeing moons!
