Have you ever tried to photograph the moon only to be disappointed with the result? Perhaps the moon was too small in your picture? Or, the picture was not sharp? Or, the moon was overexposed so that you lost the detail of the craters on the surface?

This One-Pager™ tutorial lists the minimum equipment you’ll need, the settings to set on your camera, and the all-important post-processing that will allow you to take great pictures of the moon.

Read our tutorial: HOW TO… Photograph the Moon.

Here’s one picture of the Moon, but bet you have never seen any photo like this one before. It is in fact a gravity map of the surface of the Moon. Blue indicates regions of slightly lighter gravity and red indicates regions of slightly stronger gravity. The image(s) were taken by the twin Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) satellites, launched in 2011, which were eventually crashed into a lunar crater at about 6,000 kilometer per hour on December 14, 2012. Not good if any alien is watching us, concluding perhaps that is our modus operandi whenever we send a satellite to survey a planet. We come in peace… CRASH!

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Source: spaceweather.com via Photoxels on Pinterest

This is just a beautiful picture of the International Space Station passing over the Moon taken by Mariano Ribas.

Also, do not forget that tonight, March 12th, is a wonderful opportunity to take a picture of Comet Pan-STARRS close to the moon. How do you find the comet? According to SpaceWeather.com:

Look low and west after sunset for the Moon and Pan-STARRS only a few degrees apart. Let the Moon guide you to the comet; it is visible to the naked eye if you know where to look. Binoculars are helpful, too.

You may need to do two quick shots, one exposed for the moon and the other one exposed for the comet, then layer them together in post-processing.

For more information, visit SpaceWeather.com.

More photography tips about photographying the comet at: Bob Atkins.

Seeing we are all excited about the Curiosity rover landing on Mars, and while we wait for more photos from its space cameras, here’s how Mars would look like from Earth IF it took our moon’s place, i.e. revolving around Earth at the same distance as the moon. Aww, why don’t we go ahead and see how the other planets would also appear? This is exactly what artist Brad Goodspeed did in this video as he imagines what the planets would look like if they were to orbit Earth, in place of the moon. Beautiful!

When Jupiter rolls by, it is Earth that suddenly seems to become its moon!

via FlowingData

From NASAExplorer

From our perspective, the craters of the moon never seem to change and appear to have always been there. But the moon didn’t always look like this. Using images provided by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, NASA has put together this animation of how the moon surface may have evolved through history.

via viralviralvideos

From JPLNews

NASA has released the first ever video of the far side of the moon. Because we always see the same side of the moon all the time, no matter where you are on Earth, we tend to think that the other side must be always dark. In fact, it is often bathe in sunlight as this video attests to.

via dvice

600mm, P, Spot, ISO 100, 1/320 sec., F5.2, Cropped, Resized, Sharpened

Went out and saw the full moon today on a clear night. The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ150 made it all so easy to capture great shots of the moon. Again, I used the car roof for support and took 3 shots, the second one being the best of the lot.

The moon is pockmarked with craters. Fly over [VIDEO] the Barringer Crater [PICS] right here on Earth to have an idea what one looks like. Interesting factoid: The Barringer Crater or Meteor Crater is today still owned by the Barringer family. Apollo astronauts even trained there for their moon missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Saw this moon up in the night sky and decided to try the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ150 and its 24x optical zoom. I hand held the camera but used the roof of my car as support. I power zoomed it to the maximum 600mm (equiv.), set the metering to Spot, shooting mode to P and ISO 100. The camera used 1/30 sec. at F5.2. I cropped the image, slightly reduced it to fit the page, sharpened. I took seven shots in all and this is the 5th one in the series and the sharpest one. It’s almost a half moon, jumping cow not included.

Image credit: NASA

Two instruments on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft have produced the sharpest ever elevation map of the Moon. Using the data from the camera instrument (specifically the Wide Angle Camera) and the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (Lola) instrument, NASA scientists have mapped the troughs and bumps over nearly the entire Moon with a pixel scale close to 100m (328 ft).

via BBC