That’s Us On The Moon!

at

Last week’s full moon or Buck Moon (captured during its partial eclipse by Cristian Fattinnanzi) was very full. How full, you ask?

…it fell almost exactly in a line with the Sun and the Earth. When that happens the Earth casts its shadow onto the Moon. The circularity of the Earth’s shadow on the Moon was commented on by Aristotle and so has been noticed since at least the 4th century BC. What’s new is humanity’s ability to record this shadow with such high dynamic range (HDR).

The featured HDR composite of last week’s partial lunar eclipse combines 15 images and includes an exposure as short as 1/400th of a second — so as not to overexpose the brightest part — and an exposure that lasted five seconds — to bring up the dimmest part. This dimmest part — inside Earth’s umbra — is not completely dark because some light is refracted through the Earth’s atmosphereonto the Moon. A total lunar eclipse will occur next in 2021 May.

Giant image here.

UPDATE: a deliciously moony mashup from 2013.

apod

Sponsored Link

7 thoughts on “That’s Us On The Moon!

  1. Slightly Bemused

    Beautiful photo! I sadly missed the live event through a combination of forgetting, and cloud cover when I remembered.

Comments are closed.

Sponsored Link
Broadsheet.ie