crescent Moon – The Amazing Sky

July 21, 2017July 21, 2017

The Moons of Lost Sleep

Waning Moon in the Morning Series (with Labels)

These are the Moons only insomniacs and night shift workers get to see. These are the waning Moons of morning.

For eight mornings I’ve been up at 4 a.m. each day to catch the early Moon and collect a series of images of its waning phases.

The result is above, a series that runs from right to left in time, from the 19-day-old waning gibbous Moon, to the 26-day-old thin crescent Moon.

I ordered them that way in the composite to reflect the direction the Moon moves across the sky. As it orbits Earth and wanes, the Moon moves from west to east, or right to left, in the sky from morning to morning, at least in the northern hemisphere.

A run of clear nights and mornings made the series possible. From Alberta, as dry as it is, too many cloudy nights make a consistent Moon phase series a challenge at best.

As it was I had to contend with smoke from forest fires in B.C. which reddened the Moon on the last few mornings, a tint I had to correct for the composite above. But here below, is what the Moon really looked like one morning.

Smoky Waning Crescent Moon — The smoky orange Moon of July 17.

The last two Moons, at 25 and 26 days old (i.e. the number of days since the previous New Moon phase) exhibited the phenomenon known as Earthshine. You can see the night side of the Moon glowing gently with sunlight reflected first off the Earth.

Waning Moon and Earthshine (July 20, 2017) — Earthshine on the 25-day old Moon on July 20 at dawn.

Below, this was the Moon this morning, July 21, with it very low in the east amid the twilight sky.

Waning 26-Day Moon with Earthshine — Earthshine on the thin 26-day old Moon on July 21 at dawn.

This final morning was exceptional. The smoke had cleared off, and when I got up at 4 a.m. (reluctantly!) for the last shoot I was greeted with the best display of noctilucent clouds I had seen in many years. They covered the northeast and eastern skies in a rare “grand display.”

Noctilucent Clouds at Dawn with the Moon and Venus — Noctilucent clouds with the Moon and Venus in the dawn sky, from southern Alberta, July 21, 2017.

The thin crescent Moon is just rising at right, with Venus bright as a “morning star” at far right. This was a sky certainly worth losing sleep over.

December 31, 2016December 31, 2016

End of Year Skies

The crescent Moon rises into the western evening sky as 2016 ends, while Venus shines bright, and Orion rises into the east.

Getting clear skies is a rare treat of late, but these are images from two such nights this week. On December 30, the thin waxing Moon appeared in the colourful twilight of a winter night. Despite the clouds and the Moon’s low altitude, the dark side of the Moon is plainly visible illuminated by Earthshine.

Venus is now brilliant as an evening star in the southwest. Here is it over the old wood grain elevators at Mossleigh, Alberta, some of the few of these landmarks left standing on the prairies.

Fainter Mars shines above Venus and over the month of January, Venus will climb up to meet Mars by month’s end for a fine conjunction with the crescent Moon as well. Watch through January as Venus and Mars converge.

As the planets set into the southwest, Orion the Hunter rises into the east. Here it is over the Mossleigh elevators, illuminated by local lights.

Enjoy the winter skies as clouds permit!

Clear skies and Happy New Year!

January 6, 2016

Planets in the January Dawn

The waning Moon joined Venus and Saturn on a cold winter dawn.

This was the scene this morning, January 6, as the waning crescent Moon met with Venus (bright, at centre) and Saturn (below and left of Venus) in the cold morning twilight.

The grouping appeared above the stars of Scorpius. Antares is just above the treetops.

The top image is with the Canon 60Da and 50mm lens.

The view below, with the 135mm telephoto and Canon 6D camera, is from a half hour earlier before the sky began to brighten with morning twilight.

Waning Moon with Venus & Saturn (Jan 6, 2016) — The waning crescent Moon above Venus and Saturn (dimmer and below Venus) in the pre-dawn sky on January 6, 2016, taken from home on a cold winter morning at -20° C. This is a composite of a long exposure (8s) for the ground, a slightly shorter exposure (6s) for the sky, and shorter exposures for the Moon to avoid it being totally overexposed and to preserve the Earthshine. All with the 135mm lens and Canon 6D.

Venus passes very close to Saturn this weekend, with the two worlds appearing within a telescope field on the mornings of January 8 and 9. Get up early before sunrise and look southeast. Binoculars will provide a superb view.

Venus is hard to miss, but is now dropping lower each morning and will soon be gone from view as it ends its wonderful appearance as a morning star.

November 6, 2015November 6, 2015

Three Planets and the Moon in the Morning

The waning crescent Moon joined the planet trio this morning for a fine sight in the dawn.

This was the scene on November 6 with the waning crescent Moon just below Jupiter, and those two worlds just above the pairing of bright Venus with dim red Mars.

On Saturday, November 7, the waning Moon will sit beside Venus for an even more striking conjunction.

The waning crescent Moon below Jupiter, with that pair of worlds above the pairing of Venus (bright) and red Mars (just above Venus), all in the dawn sky in Leo, November 6, 2015. The stars of Leo are above, including Regulus. This is a composite of 4 exposures: 15 seconds for the ground (to bring out detail there), 4 seconds for the sky (short enough to prevent star trailing), and 1 and 1/4 seconds for the Moon itself to prevent it from being totally blown out as a bright blob. All with the Nikon D750 at ISO 2000 and Sigma 24mm Art lens at f/4.5. Taken from home. — The waning crescent Moon below Jupiter, with that pair of worlds above the pairing of Venus (bright) and red Mars (just above Venus), all in the dawn sky in Leo, November 6, 2015. The stars of Leo are above, including Regulus.
This is a composite of 4 exposures: 15 seconds for the ground (to bring out detail there), 4 seconds for the sky (short enough to prevent star trailing), and 1 and 1/4 seconds for the Moon itself to prevent it from being totally blown out as a bright blob. All with the Nikon D750 at ISO 2000 and Sigma 24mm Art lens at f/4.5. Taken from home.

This meeting of the Moon with the planet trio more or less concludes the superb series of dawn sky conjunctions we’ve been enjoying over the last month.

The planets remain in the morning sky but now go their own ways as Mars and Jupiter climb higher, while Venus drops lower.

October 9, 2015October 9, 2015

The Moon and Four Planets

The Moon appeared along with four planets in the dawn sky.

The sky was filled with planets this morning, as all four of the closest planets to the Sun appeared along the ecliptic in the morning sky. Plus there’s a fifth planet in the picture – Earth.

Here, the waning crescent Moon, lit by Earthshine, appears with four planets on the morning of October 9, 2015, with the planets from bottom left to top right:

• Mercury, just above the horizon between the low cloud bands, at lower left
• Jupiter, bright at centre
• Mars, reddish and above Jupiter
• Venus, brightest at upper right and in some thin cloud.

The bright star Regulus in Leo is above and to the left of Venus.

Above is an unlabeled version of the image.

TECHNICAL:

It’s a blend of four exposures: a long 4-second exposure for most of the sky and ground, plus shorter 2, 1, and 1/2 second exposures for the bright twilight area and around the Moon and Venus, to prevent those areas from being blown out. Blending is with masks, not HDR. All were shot with the Canon 6D at ISO 400 and 50mm Sigma lens at f/2.5.

October 8, 2015October 8, 2015

Dawn Sky Delight – the Real Scene

The Moon, planets and Northern lights provided a wonderful show in the dawn sky.

What a superb scene this was. On October 8 the waning crescent Moon shone near Venus (brightest) and Regulus, with red Mars and bright Jupiter paired below.

If that wasn’t enough, as the wide-angle panorama below shows, the Northern Lights were also ending a night of performance, with an arc along the horizon and pulsing waves rising up the sky to the northeast near the planet grouping.

The panorama also sweeps right, to the south, to take in the winter Milky Way and constellations of Orion and Canis Major. Click on the image to bring it up full screen.

The Moon will appear near Mars and Jupiter on the morning of October 9, and then the three planets will begin to converge for a tight gathering for a few mornings around October 25.

Be sure to wake early for the dawn sky show that continues all this month!

September 10, 2015

Dawn Worlds

The waning crescent Moon joined Venus and Mars in the dawn sky.

I blogged about this conjunction a few days ago, and here is the real thing.

On the morning of September 10 the waning crescent Moon gathered near bright Venus and much dimmer but redder Mars (at left) in the dawn sky.

Venus and Mars have both moved into the morning sky, where they will begin a series of conjunctions with the Moon and with Jupiter, now just emerging from behind the Sun, over the next two months. This gathering is just the start of the dawn planet dance.

For the technically minded, this is a high-dynamic range stack of 5 exposures to accommodate the large range in brightness between the sky and Moon, and to preserve the earthshine on the “dark side of the Moon.”

I shot this with the Canon 6D and 135mm lens at f/2 and at ISO 800 in a set of 8, 4, 2, 1 and 0.5-second exposures, blended with HDR Pro in Photoshop using 32-bit mode of Adobe Camera Raw.

May 22, 2015May 22, 2015

Urban and Rural Moons

The waxing Moon and Venus shine over contrasting landscapes, both urban and rural.

I shot the main image at top last night, May 21, from a site overlooking the urban skyline of Calgary, Alberta. The waxing Moon shines near Venus in the twilight sky.

By contrast I shot the image below the night before, from a location that couldn’t be more different – remote, rural Saskatchewan, on a heritage farmstead first settled in the 1920s by the Butala family. It is now the Old Man on His Back Prairie and Heritage Conservation Area.

Here, the crescent Moon shines a little lower, below Venus, amid the subtle colours of twilight in a crystal clear prairie sky.

However, as the top image demonstrates, you don’t need to travel to remote rural locations to see and photograph beautiful sky sights. Twilight conjunctions of the Moon and bright planets lend themselves to urban nightscapes.

April 21, 2015April 21, 2015

Conjunction Over the Old Barn

The Moon and Venus shine in conjunction over an old pioneer barn.

Tonight, April 21, the waxing crescent Moon passed a wide eight degrees to the left of Venus. That’s a wide conjunction to be sure, if we can even call it a conjunction!

Nevertheless, when the two brightest objects in the night sky come together it’s worth looking at and photographing.

I had planned to drive west, to the Kananaskis area of southern Alberta, to shoot the celestial scene over the Rockies. But clouds to the west thwarted those plans.

As it is, I still fought the oncoming clouds out on the plains. I chose a favourite old barn near home. It made a rustic foreground to the twilight sky.

Venus remains a brilliant “evening star” all spring and into the early summer. We’ll see a similar wide passage of the crescent Moon by Venus a month from now, on the evening of May 21.

April 17, 2015April 17, 2015

Heads Up! – Dual Conjunctions in the Spring Sky

On the evening of April 21 the waxing Moon shines near Venus, while Mercury appears near Mars.

Say goodbye to the winter sky, as Orion and Taurus sink into the western twilight. Joining them is an array of planets, and the Moon.

Look west on April 21 and you’ll see the waxing crescent Moon near brilliant Venus, with both above the Hyades star cluster and the bright star Aldebaran in Taurus.

The thinner Moon will appear below Venus the night before, on April 21, while on April 22, the waxing Moon, then a wider crescent, will sit well above Venus.

If you have an unobstructed view to the west also look for the pairing of Mercury and Mars low in the twilight. You might need to use binoculars to pick them out.

Mercury is just beginning its best evening appearance of the year for the northern hemisphere. So if you miss it April 21, you have another couple of weeks to find it in the evening sky.

Waxing Moon Amid the Hyades (Telescope)

On the nights around April 21, also look for Earthshine lighting the dark side of the Moon. You can see the night side of the Moon because it is being illuminated by sunlight reflecting off the Earth, shining brightly in the lunar sky.

The above image is a view of Earthshine from a month ago, on March 24, when the Moon appeared in the Hyades star cluster.

Enjoy the spring sky adorned by Venus as a bright “evening star,” and joined by the Moon on April 21.

March 24, 2015March 24, 2015

Moon Amid the Hyades

The waxing crescent Moon shines amid the stars of the Hyades cluster.

I shot these on the evening of March 24 when, from western North America, the Moon appeared superimposed in front of the sprawling Hyades star cluster in Taurus.

The main image at top is with a 200mm telephoto lens and takes in most of the Hyades and the bright red star Aldebaran at lower left. Unfortunately, it also includes a blue lens flare from the brilliant and overexposed crescent, a tough element to “photoshop” out.

The image is a high dynamic range stack of 3 exposures. Even so, I purposely overexposed the Moon to bring out the stars and their colours.

This close up of the Moon includes fewer Hyades stars, but with the Moon centred I was able to avoid the lens flare. It’s an HDR stack of 5 exposures, to capture details in the sunlit crescent as well as on the dark side of the Moon lit by blue Earthshine.

These are the last telescopic shots from my winter in New Mexico, as the telescope and mount gets packed up tomorrow, in preparation for the trip back to Canada.

It’s been a fabulous winter of sky shooting, with some 500 gigabytes of images shot, processed, and archived!

March 16, 2015March 16, 2015

The Waning Moon of Morning

The waning crescent Moon shines with sunlight and Earthlight in the morning sky.

This was the Moon before dawn this morning, March 16, 2015. It’s the waning crescent Moon four days before the New Moon of March 20, when the Moon will eclipse the Sun.

This view shows the sunlit crescent and the dark side of the Moon also lit by sunlight, but sunlight reflecting off the Earth first. The night side of the Moon is lit by blue Earthshine.

To record details in both the bright and dark sides of the Moon I shot six exposures, from 1/160th second to 6 seconds, combining them in a high-dynamic range stack with Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw for the tone-mapping.

I shot it through my 92mm refractor, shown here in a beauty shot from the evening before.

$TMB Refractor & Mach1 Mount$

The upcoming solar eclipse by the Moon is visible as a partial eclipse from much of northern Europe (but not from North America, except from a teenie bit of Newfoundland), and as a total eclipse from a path running up the North Atlantic.

The only landfall for the total eclipse path are the Faroe Islands and the Arctic island of Svalbard.

For more details about the eclipse see The Great American Eclipse.

I’ll be missing this eclipse, the first total solar eclipse I’ve chosen to sit out since 1995, 20 years ago. My next total solar eclipse will be August 21, 2017. At least, that’s the plan!

Clear skies to all my eclipse chasing friends, on land, on the sea, and in the air on Friday morning.

February 16, 2015February 16, 2015

Heads Up! – The Moon Meets Mars & Venus

This Friday, February 20, look west to see one of the best planet conjunctions of 2015.

On the evening of February 20, the waxing crescent Moon joins Venus and Mars in the western sky to create a tight gathering of worlds in the twilight.

The trio of worlds will be just one degree apart, close enough to fit within the low-power field of a telescope.

However, the conjunction will be easy to sight with the unaided eye, with the possible exception of Mars itself. It is now dim enough, and so close to brilliant Venus and the Moon, that picking it out might be tough without optical aid.

But any binoculars will nicely show this wonderful trio, as here:

This closeup image shows the field through binoculars, which typically frame about six to seven degrees of sky. The Moon, Venus and Mars will be a mere one degree apart.

The next night, February 21, the crescent Moon will sit above the Venus-Mars pair. But the two planets will be even closer together, just 1/2 degree apart. They will be a little farther apart on February 22.

Venus and Mars pass in conjunction this weekend as Mars sinks lower into the sky, to disappear behind the Sun by spring, while Venus climbs higher, to dominate the spring sky this year.

This will be a photogenic conjunction, so get your camera out. Use a normal to moderate telephoto lens (50mm to 135mm) to frame the celestial gathering above a scenic horizon.

January 21, 2015

Moon, Mercury and Venus in Conjunction

This was the scene on Wednesday night, as the waxing Moon formed a triangle with Mercury and Venus.

Skies cleared nicely this evening, providing a beautiful view and photogenic scene of the inner planets near the waxing Moon.

On January 21 the crescent Moon appeared with Venus (at left) and Mercury (below), and with the trio above the lights of Silver City, New Mexico.

Compare this view of reality with the graphic from my blog of a few days ago, and with a similar scene a month earlier with the Moon closer to Venus but with no Mercury.

With the Moon now returning to the sky, sighting Comet Lovejoy will become more difficult.

On Thursday night, January 22, the Moon will be higher and shine near Mars.

Happy viewing!

December 26, 2014December 26, 2014

Both Sides of the Boxing Day Moon

The dark and bright side of the Moon appear together in a portrait of the 5-day Moon.

This was the waxing crescent Moon on Friday, December 26 – Boxing Day.

In this image you can see both the bright crescent directly lit by the Sun, and details in the dark side of the Moon lit only by sunlight reflected off Earth – Earthshine.

I used a composite of 5 exposures from 8 seconds to 1/50 second to capture both sides of the Moon, with the images merged in Photoshop’s HDRPro module.

I shot the images through my TMB 92mm apo refractor using the Canon 60Da camera, on a very clear night in New Mexico.

Happy Boxing Day to all!

December 24, 2014December 24, 2014

The Christmas Eve Sky

This was the sky on the night before Christmas, with the Moon setting and Orion rising.

It was a crisp and calm night on Christmas Eve, with the waxing Moon shining beside Mars in the west at right. The western sky was marked by the faint tower of light called the Zodiacal Lights. To the east at left, Orion was rising beside the Milky Way.

The main image is a 180° panorama taken at the City of Rocks State Park, south of Silver City, New Mexico, and a particularly photogenic site for nightscape images.

This was the scene earlier in the evening with the Moon beside Mars, and the pair well above Venus down in the twilight, all framed by one of the park’s windmills.

Here is a close-up of Orion climbing over the rock formations in the state park. This is a single exposure with the foreground lit by the waxing crescent Moon.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

December 22, 2014December 22, 2014

Venus and a Silvery Moon over Silver City

The thin Moon and Venus hang over the lights of Silver City, New Mexico.

Tonight, December 22, the 24-hour-old crescent Moon shone a binocular field to the right of brilliant Venus. I caught both hanging in the sky over downtown Silver City, set in stunningly clear twilight.

Venus is just beginning what promises to be a spectacular evening appearance in the western sky over the next few months, as it climbs higher.

The Moon, on its shorter cycle around the sky, is emerging into the evening sky for the end-of-year holidays. Watch it wax into a quarter Moon, then to Full, over the next two weeks. Tonight, the glow of Earthshine was prominent lighting the dark side of the Moon.

I shot this from east of the city, using a 135mm telephoto on my Canon 60Da camera.

Happy holidays to all!

November 25, 2014November 25, 2014

The Dark Side of the Moon in Twilight

The waxing crescent Moon shines amid the stars and deep blue twilight.

This was the scene last night, as the two-day-old Moon reappeared in the evening sky as a thin crescent.

The Moon looks full because most of the side facing us was brilliantly lit by Earthshine, sunlight reflected off the Earth and lighting the Moon. Here, only the thin crescent at right is directly lit by the Sun.

This was a particularly bright example of Earthshine, likely because so much of the northern part of the Earth is now covered with cloud and snow, making Earth even more reflective than it usually is.

To capture this scene through a telescope, I shot a set of high-dynamic-range exposures, from long to short, to capture the huge range in brightness from the dayside to the darkside of the Moon. The long exposure also captured the stars in the deep blue twilight of a clear New Mexico sky.

August 18, 2014

Dawn Conjunction of Venus and Jupiter

It was a fine celestial sight to begin the week, as Venus met Jupiter in the dawn sky.

This morning, August 18, Venus and Jupiter appeared just 1/2 degree apart, as close as they’ve appeared to each other since 1999.

The top image shows the wide-angle setting, with Venus and Jupiter tightly paired near the horizon, and the waning Moon above, itself in conjunction with Aldebaran in the Hyades star cluster.

This zooms into the main event, the Venus-Jupiter pairing, as they were emerging from the horizon haze.

I shot this from home, off the back deck, having little ambition at 5 a.m. to venture any further afield. I had planned to shoot this from Dinosaur Park but had second thoughts on the hour drive there and back!

This zooms into the secondary show this morning, the meeting of the waning crescent Moon with the brightest star in Taurus, Aldebaran, and its companion stars in the Hyades star cluster. This is a telephoto lens shot with a fixed camera, no tracking.

Thus begins a fine two weeks of stargazing, weather permitting, as the Moon exits the sky to leave us the summer Milky Way at its best, and dual pairs of planets in the dusk and dawn sky – Mars and Saturn converging in the evening and Venus and Jupiter, now parting ways, in the morning.

June 24, 2014

Moon and Venus Rising

The waning Moon and Venus rise together into the summer dawn.

This was the scene this morning, June 24, as the waning crescent Moon rose together in conjunction with Venus, into the dawn sky.

The morning could not have been more clear for a great view of them coming up over the distant hills in southern Alberta.

Pity there was not also some noctilucent clouds, but this morning there was no sign of them. Nor of any aurora through the night, despite promising signs of activity. But the morning show made up for their absence.

The waning Moon and Venus are together again on the morning of July 24, exactly a month from now.

April 30, 2014

New Mexico New Moon

The thin waxing crescent Moon returned to the evening sky tonight, seen here in the deepening blue of a New Mexico evening.

I’m in Silver City, New Mexico (altitude 5900 feet) for a few days and nights, checking out places to spend next winter, under clearer and warmer skies than back home … and with rarely any snow to shovel.

This was the scene tonight, on the ranch road with one of the prime property choices – astronomers check real estate locations by day and night!

The crescent Moon is lit by Earthshine as it sits amid the deep blue twilight. The stars of Taurus show up flanking the Moon, with the Hyades at left and Pleiades at right.

This image is a high-dynamic range stack of 6 exposures from 2 to 20 seconds, to capture the ground detail without blowing out the Moon. Lights from an approaching pickup truck nicely lit the trees during the final longest exposure.

For the technically minded, I stacked the images using Photoshop CC HDR Pro, then “tone-mapped” them using Adobe Camera Raw in 32 bit mode.

The sky was hazy all day and evening, from wind-blown dust common to the area. Fierce southerly winds were whipping up dust all day, which hung in the sky all evening as well.

The sunset was a golden yellow from all the dust in the air. Once it got dark the sky lacked the ideal desert transparency, muting the zodiacal light I saw last night from the Chiricahuas.

Not every night is perfect in the high desert!

April 6, 2014

The Waxing Moon of Oz

The waxing Moon shines amid twilight clouds from Australia.

While it looks like a waning morning Moon, this is the waxing evening Moon, inverted compared to northern hemisphere views. I shot this two evenings ago as the crescent Moon enters the evening sky.

With the return of the Moon to the sky, my dark sky observing sessions end. Next on the agenda is the total eclipse of the Full Moon on April 15. I hope to shoot that over the ocean from the Australian coast.

March 12, 2013

Comet PANSTARRS Spectacle — With the Waxing Moon

This was the night for Comet PANSTARRS! How often do we get to see a view like this, with a comet sitting beside a thin crescent Moon. Spectacular!

Again tonight, about a dozen visiting and resident Canadians gathered for a roadside star party north of Rodeo, New Mexico, to view the comet and Moon setting together over the Chiricahua Mountains. It was a stunning sight and made for a picture postcard image. The two set almost simultaneously, with the tail of the comet and “dark side of the Moon” lit by Earthshine the last to disappear behind notches in the mountain ridge.

And tonight, with the comet higher, it was visible to the naked eye for the first time, but only just – the sighting was made easier because you knew exactly where to look.

The Moon was just 3o+ hours old, so appeared as a very thin crescent. The entire disk of the Moon was visible, the rest lit by Earthshine, sunlight reflected off the Earth. In the clear New Mexico air, the Earthshine was easy to see even in the bright twilight. But adding in the comet made for a once-a-lifetime view.

As soon as they set together, we all cheered and applauded, almost like at an eclipse. It was a memorable night, the kind you always hope for from a comet. PANSTARRS performed tonight!

February 12, 2013

Mercury and the Razor-Thin Moon

This was the sky scene Sunday night, February 10, as an ultra-thin Moon entered the evening sky, providing me with a “personal best” for sighting a young Moon.

I’ve had to highlight and annotate the subjects here but all the players were obvious in binoculars. Only Mercury, usually the most elusive planet, was obvious to the naked eye. Below it shone dimmer Mars, here embedded in some cloud.

But the real catch of the night was the 18-hour-old crescent Moon, shimmering low in the red twilight. It appears as a razor-thin crescent, magnified in the inset. Sighting any Moon younger than 24 hours old is considered a find, the all-time record being a Moon about 14 hours old. I’m happy with an 18-hour catch!

On Sunday night conditions were nearly ideal, despite the clouds, with the Moon angled about as far from the Sun as it could be from my northern latitude, positioned directly above the sunset point. You can tell that because the crescent, which must be oriented toward the Sun, appears nearly horizontal.

This is the New Moon that also signals the start of the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Snake. So 迎春接福 !

December 19, 2012December 19, 2012

The Down Under Waxing Moon

To northern eyes this looks like an old Moon in the morning sky, but this is really a young Moon in the evening sky – seen from Australia.

This was the waxing crescent Moon a few nights ago in the early evening sky. Because I took this from a latitude of 30° south, the Moon is turned over almost 90° from the way northern hemisphere viewers would see it from Canada or the northern U.S.

For this image, I shot ten exposures from 1/30s to 15 seconds and merged them into one “high dynamic range” composite using Photomatix Pro software. The result is an image with detail in both the bright sunlit crescent and in the dark side of the Moon visible here lit by Earthshine, sunlight reflected off the Earth. The resulting “HDR image” compressed the wide range of brightness into one image, to show the Moon the way your eye would see it but that photo technology is still not capable of recording in one exposure.

August 7, 2011August 7, 2011

Moon in the Mountains

I’ve been chasing the Moon this week. I caught up with it last Thursday night, August 4, in Banff, with the waxing crescent Moon low in the southwest at dusk.

The location is the upper Vermilion Lake just outside the Banff townsite. The golden reflection of the low Moon on the water, the slope of the mountainside and its reflection, the dock and steps, and the tail lights from a vehicle on Highway 1 just up the hill (I decided to leave them in!) make for what I think is an interesting composition of converging lines.

I got set up and in position just in time to catch the scene at the magic hour of twilight, when the sky is dark enough the show deep colours and the Moon’s entire disk shows up, but before the sky gets too dark and the Moon too bright to make an interesting scene.

Even so, the contrast in such a scene is still very high. So to capture it more as your eye would have seen it I used a stack of five exposures, taken in rapid succession, each 2/3rds of an f-stop apart. I then merged the frames with Photoshop’s High Dynamic Range routine to create a scene that brings out detail in the foreground without overexposing the Moon and sky.

A technical method to capture a simple scene of serenity in the mountains.