Mike's Astro Photos

August 31st, 2012 hosted the last Blue Moon we will see in a while.

Blue Moon – August 31st, 2012

As you probably already know a Blue Moon is not really blue. Its just the name we give for the moon when the full phase occurs twice in one month. This is considered a somewhat rare occurrence (not really in astronomical terms) and the next one won’t happen until 2015.

Blue Moon Rising – August 31st, 2012

A few hours after moon rise, I spotted it with my telescope and took some high resolution photos. After stacking and processing I was pleased with the results.

Hi Resolution Photo of the Blue Moon – Click to Enlarge!

Click the following link to download a super high resolution photo of the moon 4000×4000! Great for desktop wallpaper.

To create this high res picture of the moon, I took 50 exposures using a full format CCD camera with a H-alpha filter. The H-alpha filter cuts down on the light so much you can capture the moon images without over exposing (great trick). I then aligned and stacked the 50 images in Registax. This process improved the focus and clarity of the image by 10x! I really like this method of Lunar photography. Its simple, fast and easy and the images turn out great.