Christmas Eve Moon 2015

Full Moon on Christmas 2015

Full Moon on Christmas 2015

 

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to all of my fellow astronomy nerds out there!  2015 was an amazing year for me and my family with the purchase of a new home and the addition of a new four-legged friend named Rudolph. Next year will be even better as I continue advancing my skills in astrophotography, and sharing new tips and tutorials with my audience.  Thank you to everyone who has ever liked, retweeted, reblogged or double-tapped any of my images this year.  Merry Christmas!

So how did I get this shot?

I always seem to get a lot of comments about how interesting my moon photography is when it includes detail on the moon, plus the glow around it you see when there are a few clouds in the sky.  I’ve heard things like, “it looks like the sun!” and, “you can see the corona!”.  Well, the explanation is simple: I combine two separate exposures together.

Exposure 1: Short Exposure for moon details

 

Details on the moon shown in a short camera exposure

 

This was the result of a 1/400 shutter speed with the Canon 70D at ISO 100.  This was taken through my Explore Scientific ED80 Telescope riding on my Skywatcher EQ Mount. If you are taking the shot on a tripod through a long telephoto lens, you may have to use a higher ISO and a shorter exposure to avoid camera shake.  A telescope on a tracking EQ mount tracks the sky and moves with the moon, allowing me to take longer, steady exposures.

Exposure 2: Longer exposure for moon glow / corona

 

Moon glow taken with a longer shutter speed

 

As you can see, even a mere 1 second exposure completely blows-out the details on the moon, yet it picks up the beautiful glow produced by the weather conditions that night. The trick now is to overlay the shorter exposure that includes the details on the surface of the moon.  You will want to copy and paste the shorter exposure image as a new layer on top of the blown-out version.  Then, feather the edges of the detail version to blend the two exposures together. There are a bunch of different ways to accomplish this task, but being an old-school photoshop guy, I still like my old-fashioned eraser brush!

 

Christmas Moon 2015 - Combining Moon Exposures

 

It’s not for everyone, but I personally love the look of shots like these. It’s like the best of both worlds, you can see the a more natural looking moon in the sky under the current weather conditions, but can also enjoy the marvelous moon details. I hope this has been a useful tutorial for this method, and that you give it a try for yourself some day.

 

Here is another Example Using this Technique:

 

Moonglow rising

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