Pushing this one a bit, but you know what today is? No, I’m not talking about that bogus gif holiday – please. You weren’t fooled by that, were you? I’m talking about Shoot The Moon Twice In Different Phases Day, and I’m happy to announce that I was successful in this.
First off, I was out about 1 AM, and did this one.
Really, nice detail and contrast
I’ve mentioned, many times, the curious wobble of the moon known as libration, and of course the different features and details you can see when photographing anything other than a completely full moon. Now, courtesy of Astronomy Picture of the Day comes a wicked animation of it, with lots of additional details.
… I get up to things like this.
So, okay, I got two different detailed photos of a gibbous moon, one waxing, one waning, taken 10 days apart. And of course, at different heights in the sky, so angled differently, as shown here in the original orientations.
Now, some landmarks. If you look at the left version, there is a dark almost-circular, almost-centered spot in the visible
Back indeed, with the animated gif (pronounced, “GAL-eh-fray”) that I wanted to include, because it shows better this way. I tweaked the colors to come close to matching, and while it might seem that I didn’t line them up well enough, I think we’re actually seeing the libration between the two shooting sessions, the wobble that the moon performs as it orbits the Earth and