The expansion of the moon.

[ollypenrice]

I'm bemused by the fact that the moon I see when I go outside can still be hidden behind a pencil at arm's length and yet the moons posted on social media, behind church steeples and Greek temples, are getting larger by the month. These composite absurdities simply go unchallenged by hordes of applauding commentators. Do they ever actually look at the moon?

Olly

[Stu]

But Olly, these are Pink, Fluffy, Flowery, Bumble Bee, Wolf, Polar Bear, Shark eating, Dragon Blood drinking Apocalyptic Moons you know, not just boring old full Moons, perish the thought!

ps I might have invented some of those, sorry I got carried away.

[ollypenrice]

Olly

[vlaiv]

Such moon shots are perfectly "composable" by using proper kit and technique.

Moon is far away enough not to be impacted by perspective and any house, building or mountain can be rendered arbitrarily small in frame - if we shoot it from far away.

Here is example image that member of my local astronomy forum took:

I cropped the image for effect, you can see whole of it here:

https://ucb3cc45aa25f75d6af2e30af99f.dl.dropboxusercontent.com/cd/0/inline/BPSRIpezkERkr_bQE32kGrzpdAWV6v_e06kAuB8-myyj916cEtzDUdlHY2RszkW-1xRlk7kOJRcfHaobkufLug-O041BxN9thyXm-5P88ZuFIdD4SLegCOHGHJzJ3wQ7HOJJtoo-anFVT_MphGKPDgCi/file#

However, that does not mean that people won't photoshop moon over their own house  and post that on facebook or instagram.

[ollypenrice]

2 hours ago, vlaiv said:

Such moon shots are perfectly "composable" by using proper kit and technique.

Moon is far away enough not to be impacted by perspective and any house, building or mountain can be rendered arbitrarily small in frame - if we shoot it from far away.

Here is example image that member of my local astronomy forum took:

I cropped the image for effect, you can see whole of it here:

https://ucb3cc45aa25f75d6af2e30af99f.dl.dropboxusercontent.com/cd/0/inline/BPSRIpezkERkr_bQE32kGrzpdAWV6v_e06kAuB8-myyj916cEtzDUdlHY2RszkW-1xRlk7kOJRcfHaobkufLug-O041BxN9thyXm-5P88ZuFIdD4SLegCOHGHJzJ3wQ7HOJJtoo-anFVT_MphGKPDgCi/file#

However, that does not mean that people won't photoshop moon over their own house  and post that on facebook or instagram.

Yes, but using either Photoshop or lens artifacts to give the impression that the full moon is vast is, in my view, phoney. It is especially phoney when given the tag line 'supermoon' when you and I know perfectly well that the moon varies in apparent diameter by an entirely trivial amount. The picture above is a trick, no more. It has nothing to do with what anyone sees.

Olly

[Clarkey]

17 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

tag line 'supermoon' when you and I know perfectly well that the moon varies in apparent diameter by an entirely trivial amount

It was 'super' in that it was bright red last night. Still the same size though....

[skyhog]

I think this obsession with the moon is getting rather tedious to be honest. I started a thread along similar lines, the monthly rebranding of a regular full moon no less... When I think what I regularly see on this forum in terms of deepsky images, lunar, planetary or wide field... The media really need to catch up.... 

[ollypenrice]

4 minutes ago, skyhog said:

I think this obsession with the moon is getting rather tedious to be honest. I started a thread along similar lines, the monthly rebranding of a regular full moon no less... When I think what I regularly see on this forum in terms of deepsky images, lunar, planetary or wide field... The media really need to catch up.... 

That's my point as well.  It's just getting silly.

Olly

[vlaiv]

17 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

It's just getting silly.

Indeed! House sized moon, come on, we all know that moon is roughly the size of football

 

[IB20]

“Captured this last night” etc etc

[johninderby]

"Gnu" Moon

Two wildebeest, also known as "gnu," crest a hill at night at the Safari Park. 

Edited May 27, 2021 by johninderby

[saac]

1 hour ago, skyhog said:

I think this obsession with the moon is getting rather tedious to be honest. I started a thread along similar lines, the monthly rebranding of a regular full moon no less... When I think what I regularly see on this forum in terms of deepsky images, lunar, planetary or wide field... The media really need to catch up.... 

I get what you are saying but oh dear God please no - keep them away from our magical encounters.  

[Tiny Clanger]

1 hour ago, johninderby said:

"Gnu" Moon

Two wildebeest, also known as "gnu," crest a hill at night at the Safari Park. 

Gnu Moon ?

Shouldn't one of them go ,  and leave the other one standing alone ?

[johninderby]

Gnu is pronounced New. 

[JeremyS]

5 minutes ago, johninderby said:

Gnu is pronounced New. 

I gnu that

[Captain Scarlet]

It’s a question of perspective. A building (or person or tree or… ) if it’s far enough away can quite easily “naturally” be the same apparent size as the Moon. Taken with a telephoto lens you can fill the whole frame with that perspective. There’s nothing wrong or artificial with that. It’s the same with a wide-angle lens (including your eye) but the “Moon bit” just occupies a smaller section of the whole image.

Personally, I love telephoto-perspective Moon pictures.

M

[Xiga]

Reading this (and being Irish) i couldn't help myself 😅

ps - The overly-large moons do bother me a bit i must say. 

[Malpi12]

3 hours ago, JeremyS said:

I gnu that

I did also grok that (other conjugations of Heinlein's gnu verb are available ) 

I think I have got a new name for the next Blue superEthnic moon,  a tefilotoed moon ?

[ollypenrice]

10 hours ago, IB20 said:

“Captured this last night” etc etc

That takes the biscuit!

Regarding perspective tricks with long lenses, it's not the trick itself which bothers me. (And it is an optical trick, after all.)  It's the marketing or presentation of such images with the 'supermoon' tagline and no acknowledgement of the fact that the moon never looks like that to the naked eye.  This feeds the mumbo-jumbo pseudo-astronomy cults abroad on the social media. Also, many of the images we see elsewhere are very obviously Photoshop composites, not acknowledged as such.

Olly

 

[Stu]

8 hours ago, JeremyS said:

I gnu that

I think we all gnow that isn’t correct Jeremy.

 

[ollypenrice]

[Tiny Clanger]

4 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

No gnus is good gnus

[ollypenrice]

Quite honestly, a lot of lunar photographers couldn't tell a gnu from a wildebeest.

Olly

Edited May 28, 2021 by ollypenrice

[vlaiv]

7 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Quite honestly, a lot of lunar photographers couldn't tell a gnu from a wildebeest.

Olly

Gnu is not blue!

[Stu]

3 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Gnu is not blue!

Au contraire.......

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_wildebeest