The Full “Snow” Moon of February 3, 2015 rising over Silver City, New Mexico in the darkening twilight. Jupiter, near opposition, is visible to the left of the Moon. The sky above is pink from the Belt of Venus. I shot this from the Boston Hill trailhead at Market Street and Highway 180 west of the city. The coppery Moon rises to the left of the Santa Rita Copper Mine, at the right of the image. This is a 5-panel panorama shot with the Canon 6D and 135mm Canon lens to cover the sweep of the horizon.
An ice crystal halo around the first quarter Moon high in the northern winter sky, on January 27, 2015, taken from near Pinos Altos, New Mexico. The Pleiades is above and left of the Moo, the Hyades and Aldebaran at left. The green Comet Lovejoy (C/2014 Q2) is on the lunar halo at top. This is a stack of two exposures, a 13 second exposure for the sky and halo and and 0.8 second exposure for the Moon itself, though it remains overexposed. However, its intensity is reduced by blending in the area of the Moon taken with a short exposure, with masking done via a luminosity mask. Both image with a 24mm lens at f/2.5 and Canon 6D at ISO 800 to minimize trailing on this tripod shot.
The 5-day-old waxing crescent Moon, with Earthshine on the dark side. A high dynamic range composite of 5 images at 2-stop increments retains detail in the bright crescent while revealing the dark Earthlit portion. Merged with Photoshop HDRPro in 32-bit mode with ACR doing the tone-mapping.
