f-stop: Moon Over Marathi

Moon, Venus, Regulus and Rho Leonis

A shot from last night; the 2d16h-old Moon (its "dark" face dimly illuminated by sunlight reflected off Earth), bright planet Venus, and two of the brighter stars in the constellation Leo, the blue spark of 1st-Magnitude star Regulus (a Leonis) to the lower left of Luna and the dimmer point of light that is Rho Leonis below Venus.

I love views and images like this one because of the sense of perspective they evoke; at the time I took this photo our natural satellite was 225,000 miles from Earth (1.2 light-second), Venus 87,000,000 miles away (nearly 8 light-minutes). In contrast, Regulus is estimated to be 79 light-years from our solar system, while Rho Leonis is far more remote at approximately 5,000 light-years.

Imagine the distances involved--we are looking back through time; photons streaming across enormous distances to be collected by my eye and camera lens--5 millennia captured in a single snapshot taken on a beach in Marathi, Crete.



 

Another photo of the Moon from last night. I love observing and photographing our largest natural satellite (apparently Earth picks up wandering rocks as "temp" moons every once in a while), and I'm surprised by the amount of identifiable detail one can see on even a hastily-composed snapshot of her disk. I made up a "key" to a few of the features to be seen on last night's image: how many can you pick out?