Monday 6 July 2020

Two moons (or five?)



Two images of the almost full moon in July. I said "almost full moon" because technically it is virtually impossible to take a picture when the full moon is at exactly 100 percent. Besides, the full moon occurred at 12.44pm on 5 July 20202 when it was daylight over Penang. We wouldn't have seen it over here.

So all I could do what to take pictures on both sides of the exact full moon. The image on the left was taken on the fifth morning at 6.03am. Initially I was a little reluctant to use it because the wispy clouds were obscuring the moon a bit. But the image was sharp enough. The moon on the right was taken on the fifth evening at 10.22pm. As can be seen from the two images, there were already some very slight blur at part the edges. One side in sharp relief, the other side with a almost imperceptible blur. Perhaps not noticeable until I mention it. Oh, yah, please don't ask about the two different colours because I don't know the answer.

By the way, did I mention that I had also caught sight of the planet Jupiter in the morning of 5 July 2020? No? Well, I'm mentioning it now. Jupiter was just a tiny prick of light in the sky but it was bright enough despite the moon being nearby. It's so much more difficult to take a clear snapshot of Jupiter because the hands cannot be steady enough. Most of my pictures turned out bad with streaks of light due to hand shake but I was lucky with this one shot out of so many duds. I had to brace myself against a fence too and lower my shutter speed to one-third of a second. So here is the digitally-cropped picture of Jupiter from my modest Olympus EPL7 camera and lens, still a bit streaky and oval-shaped instead of round as it should be, but at least the bonus is that three Galilean moons could be clearly seen. The fourth one was probably in front or at the back of the planet and thus cannot be observed at all.





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