"Cold-hearted orb that rules the night,Removes the colours from our sight.Red is grey and yellow white" (Moody Blues, The Day Begins).
Many amateur astrophotographers have a fear of the Moon that goes beyond reason. Sure the cold hearted Orb does make imaging more difficult. But imaging is still possible even during a full Moon.
At this point, you may be thinking that I'm about to wax poetic about narrow band imaging. Actually, I'm not. With enough persistence and integration time, it is quite amazing what can be captured even with LRGB.
To make my point, the luminosity in the following image was taken when the Moon was roughly 96% illuminated. (February 2nd, 2015). The color was taken near new Moon, but that is just because it was what I had sitting around. Color data can be taken during Full Moon as well. Would this image have been better if the luminosity data was taken during New Moon? Of course, but why waste could clear sky time?
I think much of the fear of the Moon is a leftover remnant from imaging with film. There it WAS much more difficult to deal with.
Luminosity data is 34 subs of 10m each binned 1x1.
Many amateur astrophotographers have a fear of the Moon that goes beyond reason. Sure the cold hearted Orb does make imaging more difficult. But imaging is still possible even during a full Moon.
At this point, you may be thinking that I'm about to wax poetic about narrow band imaging. Actually, I'm not. With enough persistence and integration time, it is quite amazing what can be captured even with LRGB.
To make my point, the luminosity in the following image was taken when the Moon was roughly 96% illuminated. (February 2nd, 2015). The color was taken near new Moon, but that is just because it was what I had sitting around. Color data can be taken during Full Moon as well. Would this image have been better if the luminosity data was taken during New Moon? Of course, but why waste could clear sky time?
I think much of the fear of the Moon is a leftover remnant from imaging with film. There it WAS much more difficult to deal with.
Luminosity data is 34 subs of 10m each binned 1x1.