Photographer Posts “Impossible” Photo of the Moon to Instagram

Photo credit: Cosmic Background
Photographer Andrew McCarthy knows that capturing a perfect image of the moon in one shot is nearly impossible, even with a high-end DSLR, so he decided to stitch together dozens of shots to create the composite that you see here. To be more specific, it’s made from two weeks of moon waxing and he took the lunar terminator of the picture that has the most contrast (where shadows are the longest), aligned and blended them to show the rich texture across the entire surface.

View this post on Instagram

Oops… All terminator! I haven't posted in a while, partly because I was under the weather, and partly because I was working on this BEAST of a project. This moon might look a little funny to you, and that's because it is an impossible scene. From 2 weeks of images of the waxing moon, I took the section of the picture that has the most contrast (right before the lunar terminator where shadows are the longest), aligned and blended them to show the rich texture across the entire surface. This was exhausting to say the least, namely because the moon doesn't line up day over day, so each image had to be mapped to a 3d sphere and adjusted to make sure each image aligned. I may or may not try this again for the waning phases depending on feedback. The full size for this, as well as a phone background, was shared with patrons. Check the link in my bio if you'd like to join and get access to more exclusive content! Prints are also available through my main gallery.

A post shared by Andrew McCarthy (@cosmic_background) on Apr 14, 2020 at 6:48pm PDT

Ensuring that he had the moon perfectly aligned, McCarthy trained his camera on the craters closest to the lunar terminator every night for two weeks as it waxed toward complete illumination. This resulted in high-contrast, high-definition photos of every crater on the moon’s Earth-facing side. However, blending all of these shots together proved to be a headache, but a worthwhile one at that.

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