Uranus with Four Major Moons

So far, 28 moons have been discovered oribiting Uranus. Five of these are so-called major moons and include Miranda, Umbriel, Titania, Ariel, and Oberon. All except Miranda are visible in this image.

Normally, astrophotographers shoot planetary images using a technique called "lucky imaging." This typically involves using a Barlow lens on the telescope to increase magnification and a fast camera capable of taking video. This is possible because planets, and our own moon, are very bright compared to most astronomical objects. Out of hundreds or thousands of frames of video, most are discarded and only the best frames are stacked together to form a final image.

But in this case, my friend Nic Patridge and I used a more standard deep-sky imaging technique to try to capture some of the planets moons. Instead of shooting video, we too 30 exposures of 30-seconds each and stacked those together. That turned out to be relatively successful in this case.