Two astrophotographers teamed up to capture a stellar image of the moon | Hacker News Reader

Two astrophotographers teamed up to capture a stellar image of the moon

npr.org

114 pointspseudolus29 comments

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> stellar image of the moon

When do we get a lunar image of the sun?

To be fair it is almost entirely stellar light

Do images taken during solar eclipses count?

Got me interested to find the Apollo landing site.

Someone circled it here https://i.imgur.com/DDy794h.png and then I zoomed around to find it in Google Moon:

https://www.google.com/maps/space/moon/@0.6714676,23.4736245...

Amazing

So are these colors accurate? What mineral causes the redish brown color.

The colors are real but exaggerated during image processing by pushing color saturation much higher than normal.

I took a pic of the moon in 2018 and noticed the colors when playing around in Lightroom. At first I thought it was artifacts from my camera but after some research realized it was due to real Iron and Titanium oxides:

https://kevinloch.com/pics/color-supermoon-2018-01-31-0658z....

That's just a single hand-held shot with a Canon 5D Mark IV and 400mm lens, so it doesn't take much.

I don't know when this "mineral moon" style became popular but it's all the rage right now.

According to one of the photographers[0], yes.

> The color in this image is real, but presented with increased saturation so it is easily visible to our eyes. The reddish tones demonstrate areas rich in iron and feldspar, while the bluish areas are spots where the regolith is rich in titanium. Oxidization from influence from Earth's atmosphere makes the colors appear like they do.

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/wtl9fj/comment/il4q5...

Is the color real if it has wildly increased saturation?

https://www.reddit.com/r/shittyHDR/comments/wo453p/picture_o...

As an aside, does anyone have a link to what equipment they used for the detail photos?

> Is the color real if it has wildly increased saturation?

It might be more accurate to say that the color is not typically that noticeable by the human eye. It's "real" in the sense that it exists even though we can't perceive it without help, like infrared light, or the sound made by black holes.

This is particularly true if you're looking at pictures of nebulas. The hydrogen alpha light is in the infrared and for humans is color mapped to red.

Cameras are sold with the capability of capturing the hydrogen alpha light. Like the Nikon 810A which is a Nikon 810 but with the IR filter removed.

Agree the saturation is pushed to the point of absurdity in the moon image. Doesn't look like a 'Real' Photo anymore and thus looses it's impact/gravity.

So a little like Hawaiian volcanic red dirt soils. At least one of the moon landing sites would have been in the red dirt. Would be interesting if the moon landing footage from there also matches up with a color grade of a redish tone. All the photos I've seen the ground is supper grey.

Anywhere on the near side would be exposed to the Earth's extended atmosphere, so this oxidation would be everywhere. Out of all the Apollo landing sites, ironically Apollo 11 would be the only one in an area not heavily reddish in this photo. So, no, this coloration would not be perceptible to the human eye.

They're obviously not accurate, that's post-processing highlighting what are subtle variations.

It's presumably being done to make the images more interesting to look at.

> "Andrew aimed purely for the detail side whereas I aimed purely for the color side," Matherne said. "That allowed us to get the full moon."

Looks like it was merely waxing.

A wax gibbon, even.

Waxing Gibbous

https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/moon-phases/en/

Sorry, it's an XKCD joke, itself from Terry Prachett. I know HN is no place for jokes...

The article certainly lacks interesting details. Why did it take 9 months to edit the image? What nuances were involved?

Also would it have been better to capture the full moon?

There's more detail to be found in the Reddit thread linked to in TFA.

Here's an example link from that post with a few more details on the setup and process: https://cosmicbackground.io/blogs/learn-about-how-these-are-...

Here's a guide for astrophotography beginners: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAstrophotography/comments/e609qd...

This article compiles a list of some popular software used for astrophotography: https://www.highpointscientific.com/astronomy-hub/post/astro...

Thanks

Right in the beginning: "Two astrophotographers have teamed up to produce an out-of-this-world photo of the moon, capturing over 200,000 shots to create a single image."

I'm no astrophotgrapher but I'd imagine 200,000 shots takes a long time to go through.

I found another really good moon photo here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/wu9dm3/100_megapixel...

Andrew McCarthy is great, glad he's been working on bigger & bigger projects lately

Parts of that mosaic are awfully soft, did they not pre-select images based on sharpness?

You can always ask them. My guess is that after 9 months and 200k images they went with what they had.

https://old.reddit.com/r/space/comments/wtl9fj/two_years_ago...

They did themselves a bit of a disservice uploading the full-resolution version. Enlarged to 3m x 3m and viewed from 20cm away, which is approximately the situation when you view this one at 100% on a computer screen, you can see every imperfection. I think it looks great when viewed at normal size.

There seems to be a blur or glow applied to the bright edge, as if there is an atmosphere. It's not in the input photos. Looks distracting to me.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LADEE/news/lunar-atmosphe...

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