Moon shots

My T-mount (connects the Nikon to the telescope) arrived in February and on the 9th there was a nice young Moon. Its age is measured from when it is New, with a Full Moon being at nearly 15 days. This day it was less than 3 days old so a nice crescent.

It wasn't dark like the photo suggests. That was taken at 1/160th of a second to avoid overexposure. Here's a couple of close-ups.



What I was really after though was a photo of Earthshine. The Full Moon can create shadows here on Earth. Because the Earth is bigger and reflects more sunlight it will light up the night side of the Moon even more. When there's a crescent Moon it's possible to see the whole.

The crescent is over-exposed because it's a 1 second shot. That star is called HP115945 and would just be visible to the naked eye if you had no street lights, perfect eyesight and a very dark moonless sky.

I also took a photo of the Moon with my 200mm lens three weeks before. Here the Moon is 9.5 days old. It was taken in colour but I had left it set to tungsten light balance by accident so I've just grey-scaled it. The above photos were all taken black-and-white.

I have cheated a little on all these using sharpen.