A collage of images of the waxing Moon, taken each night over 5 consecutive nights, from a slightly less than 7-day-old first quarter Moon on March 13, 2019, at right, to an 11-day-old gibbous Moon on March 17, 2019, at far left. Yes, I know the sequence isn’t going in chronological order from left to right, as might be the convention, but rather from right to left. That’s because I have placed the moon disks to reflect the Moon’s orbital motion across the sky, from west to east, or right to left as it waxes from crescent to quarter to gibbous. Each waxing phase appears a little farther to the left, east, in the sky each night. That’s the order that makes most sense to me. Each Moon image shows the full disk and extent of incredible detail along the terminator, the dividing line between the day and night sides of the Moon where the Sun is rising as seen from the surface of the Moon. Clouds earlier in the week prevented me from capturing the 2- to 6-day-old crescent Moons. Next month! I have boosted the colour saturation and contrast somewhat to bring out the colour differences of the lave flows between and among the lunar seas. TECHNICAL: Each Moon is mosaic of three to ten images, taken through a Celestron C9.25-inch SCT telescope but also with a Canon 1.4x telextender to increase the effective focal lengh even more to 3300mm at f/14. Each segment is a single exposure at ISO 100 to 250 of 1/20 to 1/80 second with the Sony a7III. Stitching was with Adobe Camera Raw using Perspective projection.
The Moon in mid-total eclipse, on January 20, 2019, with it shining beside the Beehive star cluster, Messier 44, in Cancer. This was the unique sight at this eclipse as it can happen only during total lunar eclipses that occur in late January. There was one on January 31, 2018 but the next will not be until 2037. This view tries to emulate the visual scene through binoculars, though the camera picks up more stars and makes the Moon more vivid than it appears to the eye. However, creating a view that looks even close to what the eye can see in this case takes a blend of exposures: a 1-minute exposure at ISO 800 and f/2.8 for the stars, which inevitably overexposes the Moon. So I’ve blended in three shorter exposures for the Moon, taken immediately after the long “star” exposure. These were 8, 4 and 2 seconds at ISO 400 and f/4, and all with the Canon 200mm telephoto on a Fornax Lightrack II tracking mount to follow the stars. At this eclipse the Moon passed across the northern half of the umbra, leaving the top of the Moon bright, even at mid-totality as it was here. These were taken from a site near Lloydminster, in Saskatchewan, where skies proved clear all night, better than the prospects back at home 500 km farther south in Alberta. It was worth the drive north the day before the eclipse.
