FULL MOON – from my rear garden – 22/12/2018

This is my response to WordPress blogger author Laura (click here) and if you know me at all, I enjoy interacting with other bloggers 🙂 , all good fun!

“Here men from planet earth first set foot upon The moon. July 1969AD. We came in peace for all mankind” (Neil Armstrong)

Below you see a picture of the Moon I photographed yesterday evening, as you are all no doubt aware, December 22nd was the shortest day, and luckily for myself we in Oxford were gifted a wonderful bright Full Moon……………. if a little cloudy! Still to this day when I gaze up at the Moon I’m both emotionally and conceptually ‘blown away’ that man walked upon it’s surface………………. very near incredible but with my ❤ heart of hearts I believe!

So how did I capture this image? By holding my camera to the telescope eyepiece hence the peripheral black circular border……….. hmm I’m happy with it and definitely the ‘best of the rest 😀 .’ Incidentally the darker surface patches you see are named ‘seas’, as in ‘Sea Of Tranquillity’ ‘Sea of Serenity’ ‘Sea Of Fertility’ etc.

Full Moon December 22nd 2018, photograph taken by my eBay purchased digital camera looking directly through my telescope eyepiece. With-out Moon Filter (please feel free to copy if you wish).

Picture below reminds me I never painted my garden fence in 2018 😦 .

My Skywatcher Refracting Optical Telescope pointing toward tonight’s Full Moon, picture taken from my back garden 22/12/2018

Btw it’s neither raining or snowing, those white dots picked up by the camera are tiny dew droplets, the air was thick with mist and wispy clouds kept obscuring the Moon.

Of all the photographs taken yesterday evening I think this is my favourite, a Moon Crater is clearly visible also a very much in focus edge to the Moon.

Lens fitted with Moon Filter this time

Below more photos now see if you can spot the one’s taken without a fitted Moon Filter, and btw it’s not the length of your telescope that counts, the diameter of the first optic denotes the size of the celestial image.

And Finally, wonderful photographs taken by Apollo 11-17 astronauts standing upon the surface of the Moon. A little geeky information for you, Apollo astronauts had a fixed focus specially designed Hasselblad camera attached to their chest, to which 70mm film magazines were fitted each taking 165 frames, along with moon rocks the photos were the only objects to return and are now stored inside a refrigerated building in Texas. Several years ago the 70mm film was defrosted over 24 hours, rolled out and unfurled then digitally scanned. After wonderful scan shots had been taken they were rolled up again and back into freezer storage.

(You maybe curious about copyright ownership, well all Apollo Media is free to use so says The US Congress…………)

A crystal clear iconic image taken from a chest mounted camera, from Apollo 11

Apollo 11 Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin

©A. Shepherdson 2018