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22 Zodiacal Light

22 Zodiacal Light

With Metro Vancouver light pollution totally obliterating Zodiacal Light, I found an opportunity to take photograph this phenomenon at Long Beach on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. The only hint of visible light pollution in the photo is the small dome over Ucluelet to the south. The Zodiacal Light appears as a round-topped, tilted cone over the ecliptic plane that angles up from Regulus (centre bottom, recognizable as the base of the handle of the “Sickle” asterism in Leo), past the Beehive Cluster in Cancer, and through the hip of Pollux, the left twin of Gemini. I post-processed a camera-raw version in Photoshop to draw out the somewhat indistinct cone. I first adjusted the white balance to Photoshop’s “auto” selection, and then used a “Curves” layer to highlight the light level in the upper part of the cone. A colder white balance setting (“tungsten” or “fluorescent”) helped to further distinguish the Zodiacal Light from the morning twilight, but looked to artificial for my taste. Capture details: Photo taken about 1½ hours before sunrise on September 29, 2019 with a Canon 5D camera on a fixed mount, 17-40 mm zoom lens set to 17 mm, aperture 5.6, 20 sec exposure, ISO 3200.
Category:Scenic
Subcategory:Night Sky
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