Lunar photography successes and failures

I finally got a decent moon shot with my Tamron mirror lens:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/3585314...n/photostream/

I was using ISO 400, started at 1/400 and worked my way up to 1/800. The
histogram of the moon was clustered around the halfway point at 1/800, so I
was wasting some of the dynamic range, but that photo looked the clearest
so I went with it and messed with the "tone" curve to make the moon nice
and bright and contrasty. Maybe a little too contrasty. Couldn't seem
to fix the chromatic aberration in the Olympus program, and I am having
a bear of a time with Lightroom 3.6

Anyway, I went back out last night to get some pictures of a fat crescent
moon (~40%) and thought I would switch to ISO 200 to make it less grainy,
and shot at 1/200, 1/320, and 1/400 of a second. Halve the film speed,
double the exposure time, right? But for some reason that's not what
happened. The images were very underexposed, with the right tail of the
histogram barely reaching the midpoint at 1/200; the 1/200 images were
unusable for other reasons, but the others are so dark that I can't
reliably separate the "moon" from the "night sky" in the histogram.
Why would this be?

The Waning moon seems to have most of the mare (seas); could that be it?

--
Please reply to: | "If more of us valued food and cheer and song
pciszek at panix dot com | above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world."
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On 2012-09-10, Paul Ciszek wrote:
I finally got a decent moon shot with my Tamron mirror lens:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/3585314...n/photostream/

I was using ISO 400, started at 1/400 and worked my way up to 1/800. The
histogram of the moon was clustered around the halfway point at 1/800, so I
was wasting some of the dynamic range, but that photo looked the clearest
so I went with it and messed with the "tone" curve to make the moon nice
and bright and contrasty. Maybe a little too contrasty. Couldn't seem
to fix the chromatic aberration in the Olympus program, and I am having
a bear of a time with Lightroom 3.6

Anyway, I went back out last night to get some pictures of a fat crescent
moon (~40%) and thought I would switch to ISO 200 to make it less grainy,
and shot at 1/200, 1/320, and 1/400 of a second. Halve the film speed,
double the exposure time, right? But for some reason that's not what
happened. The images were very underexposed, with the right tail of the
histogram barely reaching the midpoint at 1/200; the 1/200 images were
unusable for other reasons, but the others are so dark that I can't
reliably separate the "moon" from the "night sky" in the histogram.
Why would this be?

The Waning moon seems to have most of the mare (seas); could that be it?


The full Moon is much brighter than the crescent phases. The Sun is at
your back when the Moon is full, but it is off to the side for the crescent
phases. You need to up the exposure accordingly - about 2 stops. Bracket
widely. What focal length and f-stop?

Bud

On 10/09/2012 02:21, Paul Ciszek wrote:
I finally got a decent moon shot with my Tamron mirror lens:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/3585314...n/photostream/

I was using ISO 400, started at 1/400 and worked my way up to 1/800. The
histogram of the moon was clustered around the halfway point at 1/800, so I
was wasting some of the dynamic range, but that photo looked the clearest
so I went with it and messed with the "tone" curve to make the moon nice
and bright and contrasty. Maybe a little too contrasty. Couldn't seem
to fix the chromatic aberration in the Olympus program, and I am having
a bear of a time with Lightroom 3.6

Usually histogram adjustment give you the best overall control.

Anyway, I went back out last night to get some pictures of a fat crescent
moon (~40%) and thought I would switch to ISO 200 to make it less grainy,
and shot at 1/200, 1/320, and 1/400 of a second. Halve the film speed,
double the exposure time, right? But for some reason that's not what
happened. The images were very underexposed, with the right tail of the
histogram barely reaching the midpoint at 1/200; the 1/200 images were
unusable for other reasons, but the others are so dark that I can't
reliably separate the "moon" from the "night sky" in the histogram.
Why would this be?

The Waning moon seems to have most of the mare (seas); could that be it?

A quarter moon is less well illuminated by geometry and so requires a
longer exposure. You probably under exposed the full moon too. It is
always worth bracketing exposures when no film is being wasted.

But the results do show that the lens is pretty good.

You might try separating the image to HSL space. The tweak the histogram
to hide the edge effects in hue and saturation. Then apply a Gaussian
blur of about 5 pixels fwhm to hide the chroma noise.

This is an impure way to fix up residual CA but much easier than trying
to align and scale the R,G,B images accurately to fractional pixels.

Recombine it and you get an image of the moon in colour with most of the
edge artefacts suppressed and average colours locally about right.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

In article ,
William Hamblen wrote:

The full Moon is much brighter than the crescent phases. The Sun is at
your back when the Moon is full, but it is off to the side for the crescent
phases. You need to up the exposure accordingly - about 2 stops. Bracket
widely. What focal length and f-stop?

The Tamron 500mm mirror lens is a f/8 based on the width of the lens, but
rumour has it that it exposes more like an f/10 due to the opaque bit in
the middle and other light loss issues.

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Please reply to: | "We establish no religion in this country, we
pciszek at panix dot com | command no worship, we mandate no belief, nor
Autoreply is disabled | will we ever. Church and state are, and must
| remain, separate." --Ronald Reagan, 10/26/1984

On Sep 9, 6:21*pm, (Paul Ciszek) wrote:
I finally got a decent moon shot with my Tamron mirror lens:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/3585314...zes/l/in/photo...

I was using ISO 400, started at 1/400 and worked my way up to 1/800. *The
histogram of the moon was clustered around the halfway point at 1/800, so I
was wasting some of the dynamic range, but that photo looked the clearest
so I went with it and messed with the "tone" curve to make the moon nice
and bright and contrasty. *Maybe a little too contrasty. *Couldn't seem
to fix the chromatic aberration in the Olympus program, and I am having
a bear of a time with Lightroom 3.6

Anyway, I went back out last night to get some pictures of a fat crescent
moon (~40%) and thought I would switch to ISO 200 to make it less grainy,
and shot at 1/200, 1/320, and 1/400 of a second. *Halve the film speed,
double the exposure time, right? *But for some reason that's not what
happened. *The images were very underexposed, with the right tail of the
histogram barely reaching the midpoint at 1/200; the 1/200 images were
unusable for other reasons, but the others are so dark that I can't
reliably separate the "moon" from the "night sky" in the histogram.
Why would this be?

The Waning moon seems to have most of the mare (seas); could that be it?

--
Please reply to: * * * * *| "If more of us valued food and cheer and song
pciszek at panix dot com *| above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world."
Autoreply is disabled * * | * * * --Thorin Oakenshield


Here’s a little something that most any dysfunctional 5th grader or
even a demented geologist that gets to pretend knowing all there is to
know, can do for themselves.

Moon’s natural surface colors are those of all the perfectly natural
minerals as they unavoidably react to the visible and UV spectrum, as
only better viewed with having their natural color/hue saturation
cranked up, as otherwise there’s no false or artificial colors added.
http://spaceweather.com/submissions/...1346444660.jpg
http://www.spaceweather.com/swpod200...4dnmol44vuaf43

Oddly the NASA/Apollo and their rad-hard Kodak version of our
physically dark and paramagnetic moon is apparently the one and only
off-world location that becomes more inert as well as more reflective
and monochromatic by the closer you get to it, and any planet other
than Earth simply can’t be recorded within the same FOV as having the
horizon of that naked moon (regardless of the FOV direction or use of
any given lens, as well as not even possible when using the world’s
best film and optics along with a polarized optical filter to reduce
the local surface glare).

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In article ,
Martin Brown wrote:

A quarter moon is less well illuminated by geometry and so requires a
longer exposure. You probably under exposed the full moon too. It is
always worth bracketing exposures when no film is being wasted.

Someone over in rec.photography.digital linked to this useful and
straightforward tool:

http://www.adidap.com/2006/12/06/moo...re-calculator/


--
Please reply to: | "If more of us valued food and cheer and song
pciszek at panix dot com | above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world."
Autoreply is disabled | --Thorin Oakenshield

On Mon, 10 Sep 2012 13:29:57 +0000 (UTC), (Paul
Ciszek) wrote:
In article ,
Martin Brown wrote:

A quarter moon is less well illuminated by geometry and so
requires a
longer exposure. You probably under exposed the full moon too. It
is
always worth bracketing exposures when no film is being wasted.

Someone over in rec.photography.digital linked to this useful and
straightforward tool:

http://www.adidap.com/2006/12/06/moo...re-calculator/

The quarter moon shines about 10 times fainter than the full moon.
Since the quarter moon has only half the apparent area of its sunlit
part, it follows that its surface brightness is about 5 times fainer
than the surface brightness of the full moon. That's on the average,
near the terminator the surface brightness of the quarter moon is
considerably fainter. Actually, the surface brightness over the
quarter moon varies so much that it's a good idea to take a HDR image
of the quarter moon, if you're able to do so only in that way can you
get an image which show details well both near the terminator and
near the limb of the quarter moon.


--
Please reply to: | "If more of us valued food and cheer
and song
pciszek at panix dot com | above hoarded gold, it would be a
merrier world."
Autoreply is disabled | --Thorin Oakenshield

On Sep 9, 6:21*pm, (Paul Ciszek) wrote:
I finally got a decent moon shot with my Tamron mirror lens:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/3585314...zes/l/in/photo...

I was using ISO 400, started at 1/400 and worked my way up to 1/800. *The
histogram of the moon was clustered around the halfway point at 1/800, so I
was wasting some of the dynamic range, but that photo looked the clearest
so I went with it and messed with the "tone" curve to make the moon nice
and bright and contrasty. *Maybe a little too contrasty. *Couldn't seem
to fix the chromatic aberration in the Olympus program, and I am having
a bear of a time with Lightroom 3.6

Anyway, I went back out last night to get some pictures of a fat crescent
moon (~40%) and thought I would switch to ISO 200 to make it less grainy,
and shot at 1/200, 1/320, and 1/400 of a second. *Halve the film speed,
double the exposure time, right? *But for some reason that's not what
happened. *The images were very underexposed, with the right tail of the
histogram barely reaching the midpoint at 1/200; the 1/200 images were
unusable for other reasons, but the others are so dark that I can't
reliably separate the "moon" from the "night sky" in the histogram.
Why would this be?

The Waning moon seems to have most of the mare (seas); could that be it?

--
Please reply to: * * * * *| "If more of us valued food and cheer and song
pciszek at panix dot com *| above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world."
Autoreply is disabled * * | * * * --Thorin Oakenshield

Lunar photography is actually quite tricky and deceptive as all get-
out:

Perhaps the Apollo monochromatic moon was skewed by its local
radiation, which probably isn’t insignificant, and otherwise washed
out by all of that pesky bluish planetshine, and in IR imaging those
RTGs should each be like beacons of illumination.

In addition to whatever plutonium was intentionally created and
hoarded as for our weapons of mass destruction, the world now has
developed a truly considerable surplus of plutonium within spent
reactor fuels and otherwise it’s being continually produced but seldom
extracted from spent uranium because it’s too much bother. Plutonium
that’s intentionally mixed within MOX fuel is actually ideal for
compact reactors, as well as for additional WMD of dirty bombs
because, MOX fuel is suitably dirty and lethal as is, and MOX only
gets worse with the age of that fuel. A very small amount of this
global surplus cache of plutonium ever gets utilized in RTGs
(radioisotope thermal generators), such as those in satellites and
probes sent unto deep space or to scope out other worlds.

A kilogram of plutonium can safely and reliably generate upwards of
550~568 watts worth of heat within a relatively small volumetric
configuration that can potentially extract roughly 66+ watts/kg as
electrons, although due to various packaging and applied technology is
why typically 33 watts/kg is a more common level of electron
extraction. Plutonium can also be utilized to help activate thorium
as a much safer (essentially failsafe) and considerably cheaper
reactor fuel. In other words, there will always be a number of useful
and nondestructive applications for plutonium.

The spendy Mars Curiosity's RTG is only starting out at 6% efficiency,
so it’s hardly an improvement on this technology that should have been
doing at least twice that good by now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiois...tric_generator
http://mathscinotes.wordpress.com/20...-battery-math/

The physically dark, reactive and paramagnetic moon indicates as
offering a composite surface of heavy elements, that by rights should
include any number of rare metal elements including uranium, thorium
and thus plutonium as well as radium that’s creating all of that
derivative helium. There should also be loads of titanium and other
physically dark minerals and otherwise its nifty local geology and
deposited elements such as those paramagnetic basalts and even
carbonado that shouldn’t be uncommon.

Going after rare elements isn't so much about off-world adventures as
it's about our survival as a human species. Eventually terrestrial
resources that are not currently depleted will become too risky and/or
too spendy as to ignore what our moon and the extremely nearby planet
Venus has to offer, and just because others have been taking from
Venus us not a reason why we shouldn’t go there and take as well. Of
course our extremely nearby and physically dark moon is also offering
a metallicity treasure trove that shouldn't be ignored.

Here’s a little something that most any dysfunctional 5th grader or
even a demented geologist that gets to pretend knowing all there is to
know, can do for themselves, by deductively interpreting full color
saturated images of our moon.

The moon is not monochromatic nor inert:
Moon’s natural surface colors are those of all the perfectly natural
minerals as they unavoidably react to the visible and UV spectrum, as
only better viewed with having their natural color/hue saturation
cranked up, as otherwise there’s no false or artificial colors added.
http://spaceweather.com/submissions/...1346444660.jpg
http://www.spaceweather.com/swpod200...4dnmol44vuaf43

Oddly the NASA/Apollo era and their rad-hard Kodak version of our
physically dark and paramagnetic moon is apparently the one and only
off-world location that becomes more inert as well as more reflective
and monochromatic by the closer you get to it, and any planet other
than Earth simply can’t be recorded within the same FOV as having the
horizon of that naked moon (regardless of the FOV direction or use of
any given lens, as well as not even possible when using the world’s
best film and optics along with a polarized optical filter to reduce
the local surface glare doesn’t seem to help).

BTW; be certain to never get that physically dark moon in the same
FOV as Saturn, Jupiter or especially Venus or mercury, because
according to our NASA/Apollo era they’ll hardly show up and there will
be nothing of any color or hue saturation to work with. Oddly the
only color on the moon is that which astronauts brought along, and
none of that was the least bit UV reactive or even capable of
reflecting our bluish planetshine that’s upwards of 50 times brighter
than any moonlight here on Earth, and from that Apollo era there’s
still no telling what the planetshine illuminated temperature or any
other nighttime environment consideration is on the cool surface of
our moon.

Besides merely following my deductive interpretations, do reconsider
bothering yourself to take another subjective look-see and then
honestly and deductively interpret this hot terrain for yourself, as
to what some of those highly unusual patterns could possibly
represent, as anything other than the random geology happenstance of
hot rocks.

“Guth Venus” 1:1, plus 10x resample/enlargement of the area in
question:
https://picasaweb.google.com/1027362...79402364691314

This is not to say that more than 99.9999% of that Venus surface
doesn’t look perfectly natural (at least it does to me), just like the
surface of Earth might look if having to use the exact same SAR-C
imaging methods and its limited resolution. After all, a millionth of
that hot Venus surface area is still 4.6e8 m2, or 460 km2, and this
most complex area of “Guth Venus” (100 x 100 pixels or 506 km2) that
still includes mostly natural geology, isn’t involving but a fraction
more than a millionth of the Venus surface area, and yet it seems
highly developed and to a large enough scale that should make for
deductively interpreting those patterns as rather easy.

It can also be suggested and reasonably argued that initially (4+
billion years ago) our sun was 25% cooler than nowadays, thereby
making Venus quite naked Goldilocks approved. But this doesn’t fully
explain as to why such a large sale of a community or mining operation
was established, and as to why Venus has been radiating such a large
amount of its geothermal core energy and as having been creating all
of that unprotected atmosphere that has to be continually renewed due
to the lack of any geomagnetic field, 10% less gravity and being
closer to the sun.

Other thumbnail images, including “mgn_c115s095_1.gif” (225 m/pixel)
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/th...humbnails.html
Lava channels, Lo Shen Valles, Venus from Magellan Cycle 1
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/ht...115s095_1.html
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/hi...c115s095_1.gif

BTW; there's still no American flags on Venus, but there have been
USSR/Russian flags on multiple landers that got there decades before
us. So, perhaps we’ll have to accept that Venus and all of its
natural resources belongs to Russia.

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