Moonrise

As twilight descended I went for a walk. Without my camera.

Saw the moon rising at the end of an alley near our house and so ran back to grab my gear.

I miss getting my telescope out to view this beauty, although at the moment, the observatory is likely a hotel for large, hairy spiders, so until I get in there to clear them all out, I am not risking it. To be fair, the moon won't be high enough over the house to view till well after my bedtime so I don't have to go to battle tonight.



It has frustrated me of late to see a variety of images posted online in other, less discerning forums, where it is abundantly apparent that excessive 'photoshopping' has been done to create what might politely be described as an 'untrue representation' of the relative size of the moon. Don't get me wrong, sometimes the images are fantastic and show great skill in layering / editing to create a piece of art.

However, what frustrates me is the blatant attempt to pass the image off as 'real'. Knowing what I know about astronomy and the reasonable amount I know about astrophotography, I know when they have been created rather than captured. My photo for example has been captured, is one image, has had levels adjustment and that is it - it's noisy, a bit wobbly and full of fringing, but frankly its what came out of the camera and thats as close to what we saw as my camera could do. essentially, it's a pretty rubbish shot, but I am not pretending otherwise!!!

It is fortunate that on blip, many people post glorious shots of the moon, taken with a variety of equipment, but without the intention of 'tricking' the viewer. I have been known to do a few nice shots in the past!

Capturing the moon so that it looks enormous in relation to the foreground is alchemy and/or trickery. Capturing it monstrously large and in detail is the work of a telescope and camera or a mahoosive lens with the sacrifice of any real quality foreground detail.

There are many that are accurate representations of the moon illusion in action and they are glorious. There are many that have been created that are equally magnificent as pieces of creative work, but I wish people would be honest about their photos so that my urge to shout NO ITS NOT REAL could be supressed every now and again!!!

I do love the science geekery that went into proving the likelihood that this image wasn't fake ....not fake - this is science!




(I just looked at my blip from a year ago today, when things hadn't started going awry again. How optimistic I was. Now, the optimism has gone and has been replaced with the almost certain knowledge that more surgery is coming my way. Only 3 weeks till I find out)