11 replies to this topic

[Gregory Gross]

Last night at about 10.45 pm, I happened to look out the window and saw that the Moon, one day past full, was rising above the horizon. Like many in the western U.S., we're experiencing an early start to the summer wildfire season, and the sky has been quite hazy with smoke. To be sure, I will take crystal clear skies over smoke-filled skies any day, and my heart goes out to everyone who is in danger. But that moment last night, I knew I had a chance to capture some dramatic photos of a rich reddish-orange Moon. Every minute I lost, the Moon's climb into the sky would mean that that rich hue would fade and fade.

 

Within a handful of a few minutes, I had my '62 Questar set up in the backyard, and I was snapping photos. The tough thing about photographing the Moon so close to the horizon is the seeing. It's pretty much impossible to get a sharp image of the Moon at high magnification. Fortunately, I had left my Questar's focus right where it was the prior night, when I had also been imaging the Moon.

 

Any other setup of mine would have involved a lot more cumbersome setup, and the photos I would have been able to get would have had a lot less richness in color.

 

All photos taken with my Canon EOS M200 camera closely coupled with my Questar. Sizes reduced to allow for posting.

 

Photo 1 taken 10:39 pm PDT, 1/10 sec exposure, ISO 6400; Moon 8.1 degrees altitude.

Photo 2 taken 10:43 pm PDT, 1/13 sec exposure, ISO 3200; Moon 8.7 degrees altitude.

Photo 3 taken 10:48 pm PDT, 1/2 sec exposure, ISO 400; Moon 9.4 degrees altitude.

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[Spikey131]

It looked like on the east coast last week!

[William Whitaker]

It looked like on the east coast last week!

Yes! I'm in northeastern Tennessee and the moon looked surprisingly reddish last week. I had walked down to the street and back and the moon peeked out at me between the leaves of heavy midsummer foliage. And there's little else more magical to my mind that the moon in the trees.

But it was truly reddish and I wondered if there were a fire somewheres about.

Also, having been told all my life that the moon is made of green cheese, I just couldn't believe it. More like a Red Leicester judging from last week's color.

It wasn't even Wensleydale. Sorry, Wallace!!

Nope definitely more of a fine Red Leicester. 

Edited by William Whitaker, 26 July 2021 - 09:37 PM.

[Gregory Gross]

I sincerely hope this will be my last opportunity this year to post an image of another smoky Moon taken with my '62 Questar this evening. Here in the Pacific Northwest, we're due for a good soaking rainstorm tomorrow -- we desperately need the rain here. We all hope that the rain will help at the very least to tame the many wildfires that are burning in our region.

 

SkySafari tells me that the Moon was at about 13 degrees altitude when I snapped this photo at 7:45 pm local time. It was shining through a layer of persistent smoke haze that I hope will blow off with the change of weather tomorrow.

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[RMay]

Looks like something I posted a few weeks ago… it’ll be good to get these fires behind us (for more reasons than we need to post here)…

Ron

[Mike Allen]

Strangely beautiful image.  I hope you have a nice cool and rainy weekend.

[spereira]

An eerie image, for sure, Gregory.  

Thanks very much for sharing!

 

smp

[Gregory Gross]

Unfortunately for us here in the northwestern US, we're in the midst of another round of wildfires and smoke.

 

In an effort to take lemons and make lemonade, I got out with my Questar to snap a few photos of the moon this evening during a clearing in what has been an off-and-on cloudy day. At the eyepiece, the moon took on somewhat of a chocolate color as it shined through a relatively thin layer of smoke haze, a hue that is quite different than what the moon appears like on a normally clear night.

 

I took both images with my Canon M200 at ISO 400 using program mode. Both are 1/2 second exposures.

 

I had my exposure compensation set to -1 for this one:

 

 

And my exposure compensation was set to -2 for this one:

 

 

I can't decide which of the two is better.

[Mike Allen]

Both are nice.  I believe contrast of lunar features near the terminator is better on the first image, and better contrast near the eastern edge on the second.  

[norcalryder]

Thank you for sharing these wonderful images, especially the exposure information.  Very helpful for a rookie like me.

[Gregory Gross]

Sorry, I made a mistake in my note about exposure time. The brighter of the two was a 0.5-sec exposure while the darker was a 0.4-sec exposure.

 

norcalryder, I went back to my raw file editor and took screenshots with EXIF metadata for both these images in case you want to see exactly what various settings were.

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[Gregory Gross]

More high-level smoke moved up from fires in California this evening to produce quite a dramatic change in color as I sat at the eyepiece of my Questar this evening. The effect was kind of like watching a total lunar eclipse but in fast motion as parcels of smoke with different density drifted across the the moon, which was hanging in over the southwest horizon at around 9 pm local time. As the moon began setting deeper into that smoke haze, the reddish glow of the moon more intense.

 

All images taken with a Canon M200 coupled to my Questar.

 

1 sec at ISO 400:

 

 

1/6 sec at ISO 6400:

 

 

1/6 sec at ISO 6400: