The Full "Cold" Moon of December 29, 2020 rising over the Badlands of Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, on the Red Deer River. The last light of the setting Sun was breaking through briefly, illuminating the far river bank, as the Moon rose into the dark shadow of the Earth and pink "Belt of Venus" glow in the upper atmosphere. Despite being full, the Moon rose this night about 30 minutes before sunset, allowing this lighting. The Moon was about 4 hours before being officially Full at this time. This is a single image with the Rokinon 85mm lens on the Canon 6D MkII taken as part of an 800-frame time-lapse.
The Full "Cold" Moon of December 29, 2020 rising over the Badlands of Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, on the Red Deer River, here at left. The last light of the setting Sun was breaking through briefly, illuminating the far river bank, as the Moon rose into the dark shadow of the Earth and pink "Belt of Venus" glow in the upper atmosphere. Despite being full, the Moon rose this night about 30 minutes before sunset, allowing this lighting. The Moon was about 4 hours before being officially Full at this time. This is a single image with the Sigma 50mm lens on the Canon EOS Ra taken as part of a 500-frame time-lapse.
This is a comparison pair of the Full Moon at apogee (farthest from Earth for the year) at left, and at perigee (closest to Earth) at right, with the perigean Moon being a so-called "Supermoon". This apogee Moon was shot on Halloween, October 31, 2020 and was the smallest, most distant Full Moon of 2020. It was also a “Blue Moon,” as any Full Moon on the 31st of a month has to be, meaning it was the second Full Moon of the calendar month. The perigee Moon was the "Pink" Moon of 2021. With the apogee Moon, the Moon was actually full about 12 hours earlier, so there is a slight phase on its disk, with a terminator visible on the Moon’s eastern limb at right. With the perigee Moon, the Moon was officially full just 2 hours prior to this image, so that disk is very fully illuminated. In this pair the perigee Moon is about 15% larger than the apogee Moon. This shows an example of the lunar disk size at its extremes. Most Full Moons appear midway in size between these two examples. The two Moons also show the effect of libration where, in this case, more of the southern limb is tipped toward us on the perigee Moon, and more of the northern limb toward us on the apogee Moon. Being Full Moons, the bright rays emanating from “recent” impacts, particularly from large craters such as Tycho (bottom) and Copernicus (left), are prominent on each disk. Both are single exposures with the same equipment — the Astro-Physics 130mm EDF refractor with the 2x AP Barlow lens (for a focal length of 1560mm) and Canon 6D MkII camera at ISO 100. I developed both images for increased contrast and colour saturation to bring out the subtle colour differences in the mare areas. Slight haze on the Oct. 31 night mutes the contrast slightly.
