THE MOON⌗

Earth’s natural satellite, humans’ perpetual muse, and mythology’s anti-sun. The Moon is responsible for a natural rhythm that shapes the tides, the circalunar clocks of nature, and the consistency of seasons. On the more romantic side, the Moon is well-known for its presence in songs, poems, paintings, and other musings (not to mention the pop culture references… I’m looking at you, Twilight).

Still, however familiar we feel with the Moon, most of us have never inspected it more closely than with the naked eye. I remember my first time viewing the Moon through a telescope and gazing in wonderment at its perfectly-defined craters lowlighted by shadows. I also realize after witnessing others’ reactions this response is near-universal.

It is only natural, then, that the Moon is the first object I capture in my astrophotography class. To create my image, I used an observation made by Alex Shoaf on the PROMPT-6 optical telescope in Chile using Skynet Robotic Telescope Network’s interface. Because the field of view on PROMPT-6 is smaller than the Moon itself, we observed the Moon in a 3x3 dithering pattern, creating a grid of 9 seperate images which we stitched together using Afterglow.

We also took multiple exposures of each image, which we correlated to colors. For red, we took an exposure in H-alpha; for green, in OIII; and for blue, U. By layering these three colored images atop each other, a more natural color image was created!

Red, green, and blue moons

After stacking, I played with typical photograph attributes, like saturation, temperature, contrast, and exposure. I also rotated the image. My final image shows off the Moon’s greens, browns, yellows, blues, and greys. I tried to enhance the saturation and contrast of the Moon’s maria while keeping the bright areas of the Moon luminescent. At the end, I sent my image through a processor that sharpened it.

Final colored moon

Caption: My first astrophotogrphy project! It’s no wonder how the Moon inspires when seen in this way. The Moon lives in more than just grayscale; shades of blue, green, brown, and more are on full display on its textured surface. Fun fact: this image is actually composed of 27 smaller images!

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The colors of the Moon are due to its minerology – blue tones reveal areas of mainly titanium (but also iron and oxygen); the yellow areas are composed of dark orange and yellow glassy deposits; brown areas were once seas filled with brown, iron-rich lava; and light gray/white areas encounter greater exposure to sunlight. Check out some of the Moon’s most prominent features!

Moon with features labeled

Ultimately, I am happy with what I’ve learned from capturing the Moon, and I can’t wait to create more images!