I have always been mesmerised by astronomical photographs - Astrophotography, though beyond a perfunctory curiosity, it is a field I have never actively pursued.  Like most who take photographs of the moon, it always looks so much bigger in real life and is disappointingly small in pictures.  The surface of the moon primarily comprises of greyish volcanic rocks and dust particles, and even though a full moon only reflects approximately 11% of the sun’s light, the illumination of a full moon often appears bright against the vast blackness of space.  Because cameras meter for middle grey, in pictures, the moon becomes overexposed against the surrounding blackness of space.  In order to capture a detailed picture of the lunar surface during a full moon, knowing the camera’s reflective light meter reading can offer a starting point for making manual setting adjustments.

Having recently bought a new super telephoto lens, one of the first opportunities I had to do a test shoot with the lens was to photograph the full moon.  The Full Snow Moon is a traditional Native American term that is given to the full moon in February.  Some tribes also coined the term Hunger Moon or Bone Moon because the typical harsh weather during February made for difficult hunting which led to a shortage of food.  The Full Snow Moon moonrise occurred on 10 February at 17:12 local time and on 11 February moonset was at 07:10 local time.  At approximately 23:48 local time, the moon reached it’s maximum distance from the earth, averaging about 376,500 km (234,000 mi).

I was absolutely amazed when I first saw the moon enlarged by the super telephoto lens.  It is the first time I had ever seen the lunar surface enlarged and in such detail with my own eyes.  During this photoshoot, I imagined how Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) must have felt when, in November 1609 CE, he looked through his redesigned telescope, which had a 20x (power) magnification and saw the true glory of the lunar body.  Until then, religious convention and common belief held that the heavens were perfection; Galileo definitively showed that the lunar body was “not smooth, uniform, and precisely spherical” and hardly perfect.  From his observations, Galileo wrote the book ‘Sidereus Nuncius’ (1610 CE) and he described the lunar body as “rough and uneven, and, just like the face of the Earth itself, is everywhere full of vast protuberances, deep chasms, and sinuosities.”

If I can manage to stay awake at night long enough, perhaps I’ll turn my camera towards the night sky and try photographing other astronomical objects.  (Note: there is a total solar eclipse occurring later this year which I plan to try and photograph.)  And maybe, at some point in the future I will consider a proper astronomical telescope which I can use for astrophotography.

About This Photograph

The above photograph was taken at 21:35 local time.  After trying different camera settings, this particular photograph is the fifteenth in the series I took.  The only post-processing edits I did to the original photograph was to subtly enhance the contrast by slightly darkening the dark grey areas on the lunar surface and to slightly increase the sharpness within the  features of the lunar surface.  This photograph has been slightly cropped from the original to eliminate some of the surrounding blackness of space, thus placing more emphasis on the moon itself.