Incredible Photo of the Moon’s Path Over a Month was ‘Exhausting’ to Capture
A determined photographer had sleepless nights, booked time off work, and even climbed a 170-foot tower so he could capture a stunning lunar analemma image over Egypt that shows the passage of the Moon over one month.
Wael Omar says he’s the first person to ever capture an analemma over Egypt — a rare feat that requires skill and commitment. Omar tells PetaPixel that the challenge was exhausting.
“The sequence of images was taken from April 22 to May 17, 2023. The idea of the image is that the Moon returns to its same position in the sky about 50 minutes and 29 seconds later each day so I took an image of the Moon 50 minutes and 29 seconds later on successive days over almost a lunar month from the same place every day.
“Due to the tilted elliptical orbit of the Moon, this will result in a figure of 8 or infinity sign.”
Photographers can also make Sun analemmas by capturing the Sun in the same position at the same time each day for one year. A Moon analemma can be achieved in just one lunar cycle but the photographer must return to the same position roughly 50 minutes later each day.
“The journey of this image was really challenging and exhausting, on top of that the sleepless nights I went through to stay awake waiting for the scheduled time to take the image of the Moon,” explains Omar.
“There were also some cloudy nights and I was a little lucky to see the Moon through it when the time of the shoot came.”
“I used a Canon 200D camera with an 18mm lens to shoot the images from the same location and I could see the Moon in the images easily but on the last week, the time of the images was daytime, that’s why you will see the Moon images on these days a little blue,” he continues.
“Also they were so faint but I could see them when I zoom deeply on the images but of course, the details were absent so I come up with the idea to use my GOTO mount to point to the location of the Moon as of course it would be impossible to see it with the naked eye.
“Then I took an image of it with the help of my Redcat 51 scope then I put it on the same location of the Moon on the 18mm lens image.”
Omar says he used up vacation time to work on the project because of the unsociable hours it demanded and even went the extra mile to capture the stunning foreground picture that shows the pyramids of Giza.
“I exert too much effort to image the foreground as I climb up a 50-meter (165-feet) high minaret to have a clear view of the pyramids and blend this view with the total analemma I imaged,” he says.
“I did everything I could and spare nothing to make this image successful.”
His dedication certainly paid off with a special image and aside from being featured here on PetaPixel it was selected as image of the day on Astrobin.
More of Omar’s work can be found on his Instagram.
Image credits: All photos by Wael Omar.
