I’ve quite often photographed a full Moon, but this crescent moon last week struck me as very pretty. This picture (cropped) was deliberately under-exposed to show the detail on the Moon’s surface. This is not my most exciting photo, but I was quite pleased with the outcome.
On New Year’s Day there was a so-called ‘supermoon’. This is when the moon appears larger because it is at a point where it is closest to the Earth. It is interesting that the Moon’s orbit is not, in fact, a perfect circle with the Earth at its centre! The Moon’s mean distance from us is about 384,400 kilometres. However, this can vary between around 356,400 km and 406,700 km! On this occasion it was about 363,300 km away and so was quite spectacular when the sky was clear!
Just before midnight last night (Saturday) I noticed that the sky was clear and the moon was full. I hadn’t tried taking a moon photo for a while, so I took advantage of the calm, warm night. As the subject matter is decidedly unusual (from the point of view of calculating exposure) manual settings work best, with some experimentation! This picture was cropped down afterwards.
Taken last Monday, this is the first time I’ve managed to capture an image of earth-shine. This is the phenomenon whereby a very faint ‘full moon’ is visible due to the moon reflecting the Earth’s light, back to us. It’s just visible, here.
