Picture perfect?

I noticed that the photograph of the

conjunction between the Moon and M44

in the March issue Sky Guide (‘The Big

Three’, page 46) only seems to shows half

of the captioned subjects: the Moon. In the printed version the Moon is big and bright, but there’s not a star in sight.

I have noticed this several times before with other subjects. It would be good to ensure everything appears in such images, rather than reproducing the view that

those of us living under bright city skies would see!

Peter Shirley, West Bromwich

In the magazine we strive to show things as they will appear or use real astro photos of subjects, but when a rare event hasn’t happened yet we will create a simulation.

In this case the image in the magazine does show stars but they are small and tricky to see well, which accurately reflects the view you’d get visually or photographically of the scene with its huge dynamic range. – Ed

Our image of the Moon and M44 showed a realistic view (below left), rather than stars that would not be visible