Super Moon TONIGHT!!

So I saw the supermoon, it's just a tad bigger. I thought it was going to be massively gigantic that would make me think the moon is crashing into earth. But nope, still it's nice!

 

Managed to get a few more shots tonight. Couldn't get any rising shots near the horizon due to clouds, but the zoomed in shots of it higher in the sky came out pretty good.

 

I went out tonight to try and get some myself but the sky was mostly clouded over.

 

What'd you use to take the picture, the "Hubble"? Those are nice pictures! What sort of camera/lens did you need to do that?

 

Wow, Trump's not even in Office, yet and things are already 14% brighter!

 

Bwahahaaa!!! Good one, Glenn!! LOL!!!

You getting snow up there in Edmonton yet??

 

Well at least we won't be using astrologers this time around according to this:

The Moon (XVIII) is the eighteenth trump or Major Arcana card in most traditional Tarot decks. It is used in game playing as well as in divination.






The card depicts a night scene. Two large, foreboding pillars are shown. A wolf and a domesticated dog howl at the moon. A crayfish appears in the water. The Moon is "shedding the moisture of fertilizing dew in great drops".WAITE, 18 in number in the Rider-Waite deck and are all Yodh-shaped. The figure in the moon is frowning, reflecting displeasure.
Interpretation[edit]
According to Waite's The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, the card represents life of the imagination apart from life of the spirit. The dog and wolf are the fears of the natural mind in the presence of that place of exit, when there is only reflected light to guide it. This reference is a key to another form of symbolism. The intellectual light is a mere reflection and beyond it is the unknown mystery which it cannot reveal.

Key 18 The Moon "The moon in three phases watches over the landscape. From the pool of Cosmic Mind stuff in the foreground, a crayfish appears, symbolizing the early stages of conscious unfoldment. The wolf is nature's untamed creation; the dog is the result of adaptation to life with man. In the back-ground, halfway up the path, are the twin towers Man has erected to protect himself from his hostile environment. The Moon will lead him along the rugged path, past the towers, to the final heights of attainment, if he will be guided by her reflected light and listen to the voice of the subconscious. Once again, the falling drops are yods, representing the,descent of the Life-force from above into the material existence. This is the key of sleep and dreams. The Moon's three phases of intuition concern body, mind and spirit. The Moon Mother watches over the birth of Spirit into material manifestation. The number 18 consists of the digits 1 and 8, which add up to 9, thus becoming the second 9 and indicating the second initiation, The Hermit was the first 9 on the path. The Fool is still on his journey - learning, falling back, and then again advancing."

 

Depending on the sensor size in the camera, the focal length of the lens can be as much as 1.5X the stated length. For B&W renderings of the moon, if possible shoot in raw and convert the image to B&W. An alternative depending on the camera, the image can be captured in "B&W. For more contrast that would better define the dark and light areas of the moon when shooting in B&W, a filter (red or orange) is another image enhancing method.

For high or unwanted side lighting a lens hood is a good thing to employ. When shooting the moon even with a "long" lens the image is the image and unless the focal length of the lens is super long the actual image of the far away object may not fill the frame. No lens hood? make one..Use a mailing tube, a tin can or even the core of a roll of paper towels painted flat or matte black on the inside.

This is my personal preference for a long lens so I can get some nice shots of the moon next time the perigee is right and it ain't raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock here.

http://www.nikonusa.com/en/Nikon-Pr...iUHcyTy1oaHHrO463dGpMhoCqYnw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

Hell no I don't have one...LOL Maybe my uranium mine stocks will go up when we start nuking anybody that messes with us.

 

I used a Nikon D5500 SLR with a Nikon 55-300 lens on a tripod. I'm no SLR expert, but I ended up using the P setting and just kept trying different ISO/light settings. The Auto setting didn't work at all, just came out as a white circle. I'm sure and expert with my camera could have easily captured even better shots, but I was pretty satisfied with these, especially since I was on my deck with a bright-ass street light less than 50 feet away.

 

A good sturdy tripod is a must. If its windy you will not get a tack sharp image. Also you need to shoot on manual, program will get fooled by the lighting conditions often. The moon is really close to a daylight exposure. A rule of thumb is the Sunny 16 rule. Match your shutter speed as close as possible to your ISO, Iso 100 = 1/100th shutter or if your camera will only shoot 1/125 use that. And your aperture will be 16. Use the lowest ISO on your camera. This is a good starting place, bracket and zoom in to tweek your exposure. The lens you have has a maximum aperture of 5.6 zoomed in all the way. These really wide focal length lenses that are relatively inexpensive are not very fast and usually have a much smaller "sweet spot" where the lens is its sharpest. A general rule with all lenses is that they are sharpest in the middle of there aperture range. So a lens that goes from 5.6 to 32 11-16 will probably be the sharpest. You should do a sharpness test on all of your lenses and keep a log. Pick the sharpest aperture then adjust the shutter speed accordingly to get the sharpest shot. Your lens probably is not very sharp at wide open or closed. To get that kind of quality you pay big bucks like the lens BB showed above. Big minimum apertures, low dispersion glass, Florite glass ect. cost thousands of dollars. But with prosumer lenses you can get very good results by doing tests and staying in the lens sweet spots. Also very important is to use an electronic shutter release or set the camera to go off on a 10 second timer. Not 2 seconds as there is vibration that needs to subside before the shutter fires. And if you have mirror lock up capability do that too to further reduce vibration. A lot goes into a sharp image. These days with digital you don't have to wait to see results. In the film days you had to be malicious and take notes!

 

My old neighbor was a proffesor and was totally into telescopes, this thing would even move with the rotation of the earth.
It was so powerful you could see inside craters.



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I have a 8" reflecting telescope. The motor on the equatorial mount no longer works so it dose not drive with the earths rotation but the mirror on the scope is a good one. Had many refracting telescopes through the years, they are better at planetary observing and reflectors are better at light gathering of deep space objects. Good lenses is really important too. I did hook up an old Nikon F3 to the reflector a long time ago. Balancing the rig was tricky but I did get some decent photos. I would really like to get something much smaller. The Russian designed Maksutov systems of various combinations are excellent and small. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maksutov_telescope

 

Took Astronomy class in college. We had those big telescopes that mounted to concrete type tripod bases and the electric motor attached to counteract the rotation of the earth and keep the telescope tracking the star you pointed at. Thought I would be looking at and studying the stars and constellations. Turned out it was nothing but a super advanced math class like trigonometry, advanced string theory, algebra and quantum physics all rolled into one!! We had a lab at night one day a week where we looked at stars for about 30 minutes by the time you got everything ready and the assignment. I got robbed in that dam class and it was tough. Hardly saw any stars while in that stupid class.

 

What is this film stuff you are talking aboot?

 

A bud in the news biz gets some great shots of full moons with a video cam reproduced as stills on his news site. Not sure of the camera as to make or type.

Gator is spot on with the techniques. Long lens' are sometimes reflectors rather than the refractors. Same arithmetic applies. The reflector lens' are fixed and comparatively slow in photographic terms.

Sometimes on some tripods there is a hook on the opposite end of the column to attach a weight that will further steady a tripod where overall steadiness is critical in low light and "moving" imaging.

 

This is a great site to see some amazing astronomy photos, get one a day and you can look at thousands in their library. Most of the photos you can click on a get a magnified hi rez view.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html

 

Great site.. Some of the shots of the moon might even show those titanium Blads that were left up there..

 

Meanwhile in the skies above Alderaan....



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It still looks pretty Super to me. I just took this a bit ago. Sony a57, Minolta 75-300 lens. Daylight white balance, on camera Creative Style set to Landscape, with boosted contrast, saturation and sharpness. No post, except cropping. I have a couple of pics in RAW, but I took this in JPEG. Linked from my Facebook. The original image may be sharper

 

That would make a nice print. Looking good!