lunarphotography

In space, no one can hear a shutter click, and so Japan's moon lander sent off what may be its final photo in silence.

18-year-old Vijay Suddala created a stunning composite image of the moon from his home in southern India with just a $150 telescope and his smartphone.

This is something I’ve been wanting to attempt for a while, but the skies have not be clear enough to do so. Iowa skies in fact have been almost constantly cloudy of late – or a least when one wants to shoot the moon.

Since November 2011 I’d been thinking about an astrophotography project: take a photo of the moon each day from full moon to full moon, then combine it into a seamless movie that looks as if someone had moved the sun around the moon for one minute. I found similar videos, but most were simulations done in software, or photographic ones that weren’t very smooth. Seemed simple enough, mostly because I didn’t see the complications that would come along with this project caused by... physics.

My plan involved setting the same exposure each night starting with the full moon, and let the moon’s dark side gradually move across its face while the lit side stayed about the same brightness. Adjust the photos’ angles to match each other, throw all of them into Final Cut Pro X and add cross dissolve transitions between them, and I’d get a smooth movie showing every phase of the moon.

If you’ve been thinking of trying your hand at lunar photography, tomorrow night might present …