The Moon

The Moon is the most renowned space object in the entire world, both in photography and observing! This gigantic space rock is Earth's only natural satellite and the fifth-largest moon in the Solar System. Orbiting Earth for over 4.6 billion years, the Moon's presence and gravitational pull have helped our planet with climate, stabilization, and various other natural subjects. It makes a complete orbit around the Earth every 27.3 days, known as its sidereal period. Although I try to avoid the Moon when doing my deep sky astrophotography, I admire its beauty.

The image above, taken by NASA and various colleges, shows numerous craters and pits on its surface. These were created from commits and asteroids striking the Moon's surface for billions of years. It's incredible to think about how we can view the same rocking body in our skies that billions throughout history have seen.

Moon Landing of 1969

On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin became the first humans to land on the moon. About six and a half hours later, Armstrong became the first to walk on the moon. As he took his first step, Armstrong famously said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." The Apollo 11 mission occurred eight years after President John F. Kennedy announced a national goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Apollo 17, the final human-crewed moon mission, took place in 1972. 

Now NASA is currently conducting Artemis missions to land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon. These missions will utilize innovative technologies from throughout the years to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. However, this is only a stepping stone for NASA and other commercial aerospace companies like SpaceX to the greater mission: sending the first astronauts to Mars. 

This photo of Astronaut John W. Young saluting the United States flag at the Descartes landing site during the first Apollo 16 extravehicular activity was taken by Astronaut Charles M. Duke Jr., the commander of the Apollo 16 lunar landing mission. Seeing humanity's achievement through this singular photo inspired me and many others to keep working towards what they love and aspiring to change the world.

The Apollo 11 spacecraft took this view of Earth rising over the Moon's horizon from their spacecraft. The lunar terrain pictured is in Smyth's Sea on the nearside. I can imagine one day taking a tour into the cosmos to view the Earth as a little blue ball floating around in a black abyss, just like in this photo. 

Photographing Moon

Moon Photography is one of the most popular types of astrophotography around with its endless possibilities. Many people try to incorporate the moon into natural objects, like being held in between the branches of a tree, rolling down a luscious green hill, or centered within the arches at Arches National Park (which are my favorite). 

Since the Moon is the brightest and biggest target in the night sky, taking photos of the Moon takes less than a second. You can take a good photograph of the Moon with your DSLR attached with a 400mm+ lens or hooked up to a telescope of similar focal length. If you want to go all out, you can use a reflector telescope with a large aperture to capture the depth of each crater and crevasse.

For you to get a crisp shot of the moon with its rough surface of pits and craters, you will need to take multiple photos and stack them. Make your camera's ISO the lowest it can possibly be, and experiment with your DSLR to see what exposure time gives off the best results. You want the photo to have great detail with a good amount of luminosity, though not too much to the point where it outshines everything else. The sweet spot for my camera, a Canon 600D, is ISO 100 at an exposure time of 1/100 second. Once you've found your sweet spot, mount your camera to a still stand and take as many photos as you can get. Remember, the more data/photos you take, the greater quality your moon photo will be. After taking your photos, you can center and stack them through PIPP and AutoStakkert. Finally, you can take your finished product into Pixinsight or Photoshop to add the final touch-ups. This part is the most crucial if you want the perfect moon photo. I will be making a tutorial myself soon on how to do all of this, but for now a good tutorial here.

I captured the photo below of the Moon with the method above using an unmodified Canon Rebel EOS T3i (600D) DSLR camera and a refractor telescope (100mm Aperture, 900mm focal length).

Moon Details:

• Craters: 9,137

• Object Type: Planetary-Mass Object

• Mean Distance: 238,855 miles

• Apparent Magnitude: -12.74

• Apparent Size: 29 - 34 Arc Minutes

Resources:

NASA - The Earth's Moon

NASA - Apollo Image Galley

HISTORY - 1969 Moon Landing

Gallery of the Moon