Lunar - si?

The moon is just about full and has been rising on dusk when we sit in the East facing sunroom.  This has enabled me to get a few snaps - or at least to experiment with ways of getting snaps that don't just consist of a bright white circle.  All of the photos were taken hand held.

The first couple of photos were taken with the camera on "Intelligent auto" (IA) setting when the light was still quite good.
 This did a pretty fair job of displaying some of the craters and other marks on the surface.
The next night the rise was - not surprisingly - an hour later so it was towards the dark end of twilight.  Trying IA generated a few white circles so I decided to explore the "Scene" (SCN) setting.  This included a "Hand-held Night shot" subsetting.  This is a tad interesting as the camera seems to take several - in the darker shots at least 10 - images and then stitch them together.  The outcome isn't too bad although not as detailed as the offering with more ambient light.
The last three were using the SCN setting.  I was hoping to get some detail on the moon but settled for pine needles.  Can your hear the wolves howling?
 Then some clouds turned up.

I think possibly the main messages from this are:

  • use a tripod; and/or
  • not try to take photographs of a brightly light object againast a dark background using a point and shoot camera.!

Comments

Mary Chamie said…
Martin, The photo you took of the moon through the pines is particularly striking. I am amazed how clear some of your photos of the moon are. Have you ever tried to shoot Jupiter, or is it too far away? You must have incredibly clear skies to get such shots. Keep up the good work.
22 May 2016 at 14:07:00 GMT+10
Flabmeister said…
Mary

Nice to hear from you. and thanks for the comments.

I will confess that I am a total gumby in finding planets. I shall to try and improve myself in this regard (probably easier than some of the other ways I need to improve myself) and see what I can do. Thinking about our planned trips we'll be seriously beyond the Black Stump later in the year, so the light pollution should be minimal.

Best wishes to you and Joe

Martin
22 May 2016 at 20:08:00 GMT+10
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