Moon.

I love the moon. While it often gets a bad rap in scary movies, I've never found it ominous in real life. I mean, sometimes it impedes my star gazing, but that's not so bad.

I do find the moon tricky to take pictures of. For one, it moves much faster than the stars (ever tried looking at it through a telescope? As soon as you find it, zip! it's gone). It also has a great deal of surface detail to capture. And it's actually really bright.

I hadn't tried taking pictures of the moon since I got my new zoom lens, and since there was a full moon the weekend before I went to Golden I figured I'd try it out while there was still lots to look at. I set my tripod up on the bike path on the main road next to my house (I'm sure the motorists thought I was very creepy), attached the hood to limit the light pollution from the street light I was standing under, zoomed as far as I could, tried to focus, and started testing out exposure times.

One of the first things I learned was that the moon does not need 20 seconds like stars do. I kept dialing back the time until I could make out craters and maria (the dark patches). Anywhere between 1/60 of a second and 1/320 of a second provided pretty good results. I had to crop some of the pictures to get the moon to the size I wanted it to be, but I was pretty happy with the final product.

1/60 second exposure

 (The large round crater near the bottom is called Tycho, for the Danish astronomer. FYI...)

1/320 second exposure - cropped

When you look at the moon this closely, it becomes really apparent that our lunar companion has a lot of dark patches. These lunar maria are the results of lava flows from the moon's ancient past, but were given the Latin name for sea, because that's what people originally thought they were. Less reflective than the neighboring surface rock, they appear dark.

You've heard the song about the "Man in the Moon" right? Well, that's because some people think they can see a face in these dark patches on the moon. I've taken the liberty of connecting the dots on what I think they are refering too...

1/200 of a second

And apparently the Man in the Moon is Peter Griffin. Or possibly Quagmire. Either way, I may be starting to find the moon a bit creepy. (Giggidy giggidy?)

I learned in a random side note in a History class I took at University from a prof who also taught History of Astronomy (he was a cool dude) that the Chinese had a different idea of the image presented in the moon... Apparently to them it is a rabbit with some kind of cooking pot...

Peter Rabbit? Maybe.

I can't decide if that is better or worse than Peter Griffin in the Moon.

Maybe....

Skull in the Moon.

Okay... Now that I can't un-see.