Blue Moon Transition - 2018/12/20

[JimFox]

The moon was looking rather blue tonight even though we are just a day or two away from the "Cold Moon" as it's called. These two shots are about 30 mins apart. In #2, the sky wasn't really that dark, but that's how it exposed so I left it that way.

All comments are welcome,

Jim

PS. Taken with the Tamron 150-600mm G2 on the Nikon D850 in Crop mode

 

[David S]

Wow, these are fantastic. I'd love to see a slightly larger version if possible !! The exposure in the first one makes me think of Starwars

 

[AlanLichty]

I like the lunar surface detail in both of these.

 

[JimFox]

Okay Dave, for you I cropped tighter.

 

[Brian]

Those are great Jim. I need to find a good time to try out my new G2 on the moon without the wife seeing it.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Nice crater detail on the last crop.

 

[JimFox]

Those are great Jim. I need to find a good time to try out my new G2 on the moon without the wife seeing it.

Ha ha. The G2 is really great. I didn't have any of the others, so I can't speak about them, but I can say I am really liking the G2. I am really enjoying the amount of detail I can get from this on the moon. To see the craters on the moon? That kind of blows my mind.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Jim,

You are really getting these moon shots dialed in. The second shot with the naturally exposed darker sky is sort of the effect I was talking about previously. And the cropped version really brings your details out to be appreciated even more. I am assuming these are tripod mounted?

You will actually find that shooting the moon when it isn't full can bring out even a little more contrast under most conditions. I would like to see your improved techniques applied to the 1st or 3rd quarter moon, or even more of a crescent than that.

But in any case, this is a great result. I will have to try my Sigma 150-600 on this to see what kind of detail I can get out of it. Around here that can have as much to do with seeing (or the lack of it) as anything else...

ML

 

[JimFox]

Jim,

You are really getting these moon shots dialed in. The second shot with the naturally exposed darker sky is sort of the effect I was talking about previously. And the cropped version really brings your details out to be appreciated even more. I am assuming these are tripod mounted?

You will actually find that shooting the moon when it isn't full can bring out even a little more contrast under most conditions. I would like to see your improved techniques applied to the 1st or 3rd quarter moon, or even more of a crescent than that.

But in any case, this is a great result. I will have to try my Sigma 150-600 on this to see what kind of detail I can get out of it. Around here that can have as much to do with seeing (or the lack of it) as anything else...

ML

Thanks Mike! These are all handheld.

I shot some of the moon last night about 2am, and we had some fog going on, and it was of course much darker, but the shots aren't as good because I don't really notice any crater detail on it. And with the moon being up overhead instead of along the horizon the moon is much much smaller in the frame. So not sure if I will really process those ones or not.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Thanks Mike! These are all handheld.

I shot some of the moon last night about 2am, and we had some fog going on, and it was of course much darker, but the shots aren't as good because I don't really notice any crater detail on it. And with the moon being up overhead instead of along the horizon the moon is much much smaller in the frame. So not sure if I will really process those ones or not.

Jim,

As an aside, the seeing is going to be better with the moon being higher in the sky though, so you have the potential to realize more detail, simply because you are looking through less atmosphere. The concept for this is simple and intuitive, the math gets progressively more messy (as shown if you scroll down the Wikipedia page link here,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_mass_(astronomy)

but in any case it is a very real effect that gets progressively more pronounced the lower in the sky you are imaging at. Many astroimagers do not even image objects once they get low enough to the horizon for this reason.

I would also take the extra effort to try a few shots on a tripod (with image stabilization set to whatever the manufacturer recommends when tripod mounted for that lens) - you might realize even a little more detail yet that way too.

ML