I’ve always enjoyed observing the moon, with its constantly changing lighting showing off different relief. Here is the 11 day gibbous moon, still showing a strong terminator, the phase relief, and the impact rays which appear to brighten near full moon.
Geologically it is is also interesting, with silicates in abundance but also alumina, iron and a number of other minerals with different density and reflectivity leading to the colours that we observe - the blue-grey mare, bright peaks, and ejecta.
Producing a ‘mineral moon’ appears to be quite popular, and this is my effort, based purely on saturating the colour and with no application of science! If you are interested in exploring the geology, I heartily recommend Patrick Chevalley and Christian Legrand's excellent '
virtual moon atlas'. In 2020 the USGS published the most complete
geological survey of the moon to date.
This image is the result of just 18 0.03s frames (from 50) aligned and stacked in Nebulosity with a little sharpening and a lot of saturation. The mouseover is a monochrome version of the same (for the purists).
Happy Easter all.
Comments