March 7th, 2017, 6:00 p.m. local time
I made a little discovery a few days ago, documented here, that I can capture the Moon’s surface details with nothing but my smartphone, a Samsung Galaxy S7. Tonight, with the sky clear, still blue, but on the verge of dusk, I took a few more pictures of the Moon (and my, has it grown since its run-in over the weekend with Aldebaran!).
The above picture was taken as a straight “Auto” mode image. Obviously, it captures the still-blue sky and and the overexposed Moon, but at least you can see its shape.
Below, I switched my phone to “Pro” mode with the captioned settings:
Holy cow! That’d be them there Moon we be seein’!
I am amazed how much detail was captured. This started me thinking…what if I tried photographing the Moon in the same way I do the planets? With the planets, I use my phone to take videos, and then post-process those videos in PIPP, AutoStakkert, and Registax to create composite images. If I, say, mounted my phone on a tripod, pointed it at the Moon with no optical aid (i.e. telescope), and started video taping, what type of results would I end up with?
That may seem silly, since you can of course get superior images of the Moon with even the smallest of telescopes and a basic camera. But I would do this…in the name of astrophotography science. I am really curious what the final product would be!
I am not sure when or if I will have a chance do do this, but I will keep it on the back burner, as they say, until the time is right.
