Photographing the Moon

[Canis Vulpes]

I had an attempt to photograph the moon on Thursday and decided to post the results with what I did.

At 21:30 or so I noticed the moon emerging from the East and set up my kit 200-400VR f4 with TC17E teleconverter to give 680mm at f6.3 placed on a tripod.

I left ISO 125 from a previous assignment, selected spot metering and snapped my first (below) using mirror lock up (MLU). I noticed it was soft and stopped the lens down progressively but did not yield sharpness. VR on the lens was turned off because of rock steady tripod and MLU combination.

Thoughts, Visibility was moderate (approx 10k) on the day in question and the moon was low in the sky. ISO 125 was a limiting factor to shutter speed even with MLU 1/20 or so was extremely low at 680mm.

Next time I shall use ISO 400 or greater, wait until moon is higher in sky which should negate some visibility induced softness and maybe use shorter focal length using TC14E teleconverter instead of TC17E.

[Snowyowl]

Here's one I took the other night. It was just a quickie, handheld to catch the colour. The moon was low on the horizon and I thought the colour was extraordinarily rich. Being handheld it's not very sharp. I wish now that I had got out a tripod.

[Canis Vulpes]

Beautiful colours, Dan. My shot had the moon around 25 degrees above horizon. The moon appeared yellow to the eye but white balance changes in RAW conversion made it white(er).

How high above the horizon was the moon in your Shot, Dan?

[Don Hoey]

Originally Posted by Stephen Fox

Thoughts, Visibility was moderate (approx 10k) on the day in question and the moon was low in the sky. ISO 125 was a limiting factor to shutter speed even with MLU 1/20 or so was extremely low at 680mm.

Next time I shall use ISO 400 or greater, wait until moon is higher in sky which should negate some visibility induced softness and maybe use shorter focal length using TC14E teleconverter instead of TC17E.

Also my first attempt. Not having a long lens I attached my camera to my scope. Giving a focal length of 1500mm. As this gives a fixed aperture of f13 I had to set the camera to ISO800 to get a shutter speed of 1/100sec. Time around 8:50. Sky just going dark. I do not have mirror up so had to use anti shock mode and the additional stabilty of a second tripod. I will take a picture to give you a laugh.

The problem is definately haze. I feel the air has to be clear to the horizon or it will impact on the final image.

Stevie looks at the stars and I keep searching for the Hasselblads left on the moon, hence the picture title.

Don

[Snowyowl]

Originally Posted by Stephen Fox

Beautiful colours, Dan. My shot had the moon around 25 degrees above horizon. The moon appeared yellow to the eye but white balance changes in RAW conversion made it white(er).

How high above the horizon was the moon in your Shot, Dan?

It's really a false horizon. By that I mean that the ground rises as it stretches towards the road. The moon was about 15 degrees above the top of the rise.
If it's the same colour tonight I'll probably try again using a tripod.

[Snowyowl]

Nice job, Don.

[Canis Vulpes]

During a search I found this website (below), looks useful when planning a moon photo. Note the section titled 'Moon Visibility'

http://home.hiwaay.net/~krcool/Astro/moon/moonphase/

[yelvertoft]

Done a few moon pics over the last year or so, using digiscoping technique just like Don. I'd agree that have seens to be a major limiting factor.

Phase of the moon is important. A full moon really doesn't work, it's too bright and flat and there's no texture to the surface. Wait a couple of days until the light is more angled across the moon and this will pick up the surface textures much better.

Here's a couple of my better examples.

Duncan

[Don Hoey]

Well here it is.

Nikon ED82A scope with FSA-L1 adaptor. The scope is naturally quite tail heavy so adding the camera then pointing it all skywards makes it worse. As the moon is moving, the camera body is only resting on the ballhead plate. Even though it is quite hefty, the 501 head gives a bit much twang with this angle of operation.

The riflescope gives a 4x dead on finder as it has fine cross hairs.

Don

[Leif]

This might be obvious to everyone, but even if you have a rock steady tripod, there is a limit to how much detail you can obtain with an unguided camera and lens, for the simple reason that the moon moves relative to the Earth. To get critical sharpness, you need a driven mounting (termed an equatorial mounting) that compensates for the Earth's rotation. (The motion of the moon relative to the stars is small relative to the motion of the stars.) One way to improve sharpness without using a driven mounting is to increase the film/sensor ISO to allow shorter exposures. (I've not done the numbers to work out what you can get away with.)

As an aside, many people think that the best time to photograph the moon is when it is full i.e. fully illuminated. That is not really true, as most of the detail is washed out, since the light hits the moon head on, and there are no shadows. More detail is seen when the moon is a crescent as seen in Don's photo. In the region between the light and dark areas, shadows pick out numerous craters, otherwise invisible in a full moon image. I've seen composite pictures of the moon made by combining photos taken at various phases, so as to show craters over the entire surface, and not just at the terminator.

Leif