APOD: Full Moon Silhouettes (2013 Jan 30)

[APOD Robot]

Full Moon Silhouettes

Explanation: Have you ever watched the Moon rise? The slow rise of a nearly full moon over a clear horizon can be an impressive sight. One impressive moonrise was imaged two nights ago over Mount Victoria Lookout in Wellington, New Zealand. With detailed planning, an industrious astrophotographer placed a camera about two kilometers away and pointed it across the lookout to where the Moon would surely soon be making its nightly debut. The above single shot sequence is unedited and shown in real time -- it is not a time lapse. People on Mount Victoria Lookout can be seen in silhouette themselves admiring the dawn of Earth's largest satellite. Seeing a moonrise yourself is not difficult: it happens every day, although only half the time at night. Each day the Moon rises about fifty minutes later than the previous day, with a full moon always rising at sunset.

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[owlice]

Ah, that's a lovely video!

[neufer]

Those folks are too small to be real people...they must be Hobbits.

<<Mount Victoria Lookout... has doubled as a rural hobbit shire, twice being used as a location in Sir Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The very first footage of the project – the "Get off the road” scene - was shot off Alexandra Road on 11 October 1999. The "Escape from the Nazgûl" scenes were filmed a few hundred metres to the north. An old quarry at the top end of Ellice Street was later used as the Rohirrim camp at Dunharrow.>>

[Beyond]

When the Hob-Hob Hobbits go Hob-Hob Hobbling along, a-long...

[fausto.lubatti]

Excellent video and very nice idea: images and music give a plenty of emotions!
Thanks for posting!

[ewok21375]

What's the music, please?

[Skytreker]

You can tell right away that it's a southern hemisphere shot. The Moon is upside down! With Tycho crater on top and rising in the opposite direction. I wonder how the people downunder don't get seasick from all that hanging.

[gorade]

What's the music, please?

Disturbing

[Guest]

Awesome video shot. It was lovely watching this. Kudos to that astrophotographer.

[Sinan İpek]

And here is a guy who moonwalks at moonrise!
https://vimeo.com/56298775

[mtbdudex]

Wow, this full moon rising video is something to behold, I watched it and felt the joy in my heart.
Great submission!

[TMart]

Thank-you! Watching this was great way to slow down at the start of my day.

[Indigo_Sunrise]

:LIKE:

[MargaritaMc]

Ah, that's a lovely video!

This is a magical video. I turned off the music because it is the utter silence of gazing into 'space' that gives me goose bumps. Astronomer Patrick Moore never lost his first love for The Moon, and I can see why.

Margarita

[BDanielMayfield]

This reminded me of something I once enjoyed watching with a small telescope while camping in The Basin campground of Big Bend National Park in west Texas, USA. I had my scope pointed east toward Panther Pass and I watched as the full moon climbed up the north base of Casa Grande. I wasn’t lucky enough to see the silhouettes of any animals like mountain lions or black bear, but the silhouettes of mountain/desert flora were very memorable nonetheless.

Anyone with a telescope or even a camera with a telephoto lens can enjoy this, and you don’t have to be on some mountaintop ether. It’s well worth trying.

[Psnarf]

I had to mute the music. I was listening to a Dvorak symphony on Swiss Classic http://livestream.srg-ssr.ch/1/rsc_de/mp3_128/ at the time. I'm not suggesting videographers refrain from adding their own music, there's always the mute button.
De gustibus non est disputandum, as those ancient Italians used to wax eloquently.
The full moon size illusion, mysterious as it may be, is beautiful to behold. Thank you for mentioning that the moon rose toward the south. I was under the mistaken impression that movie sunrises/sunsets that appear to be moving in the wrong direction were stock footage run backward. Aha! Those movies were filmed in Australia or New Zealand, where folks grab onto the ground with their bare feet. Tourists are probably outfitted with special ground-grabbing boots.

[oguydave]

Wow, what an awesome video! Nature is surely a wonderful thing.
A question, however. If the full moon rises (and this surely appears to be a full moon) as the sun sets,
how come the sky is black?

[DaveR]

You can tell right away that it's a southern hemisphere shot. The Moon is upside down! With Tycho crater on top and rising in the opposite direction. I wonder how the people downunder don't get seasick from all that hanging.

And it tracks from right to left as it rises, whereas it tracks left to right in the Northern hemisphere.

[Chris Peterson]

Wow, what an awesome video! Nature is surely a wonderful thing.
A question, however. If the full moon rises (and this surely appears to be a full moon) as the sun sets,
how come the sky is black?

It's a question of the dynamic range of the camera and of your display, both of which are much narrower than your eye. The length of exposure you need to show color in the sunset sky typically results in the Moon being overexposed. So to properly expose for the Moon, you usually end up with an underexposed (black) sky. Without performing some HDR-like processing, it's hard to avoid.

[neufer]

What's the music, please?

Disturbing

Try a little _Tenderness_ (Dan Phillipson)

[Steve Dutch]

Yhye Moon is right side up! At least to those of us used to observing it in Northern Hemisphere telescopes

[RJN]

This video, it seems to me, is one of the few from APOD that might be the basis for a compelling story or documentary short. Were someone to interview the photographer and tell the story how how this video came to be -- from the initial idea to the (apparently several) failed attempts to the finally triumphant shot. Also some people who saw the APOD video and were somehow affected could also be interviewed. An astronomer could also be interviewed to comment on how few videos like this previously existed, how long it really takes for Moon to rise, why the Moon appears somewhat fuzzy and shivery, and why a full moon always rises at sunset. At the end of the story or short documentary, the APOD video could be shown and the link to the lasting APOD clearly given. I think the story has a lot -- human interest, the drama of failure and success, real science content, and a lasting result. Anyone willing? I would doubt it, but if so please send me an email or respond to this thread!

- RJN

[Boomer12k]

Very nicely done.

Two things I noticed. One, it rose from the right to the left. And Tycho Crater is up and to the right. Then I realized it is in the Southern Hemisphere. Here it would rise from the left to right, and Tycho is bottom right.
As other people have noted.

Right? I did a websearch: The Moon southern hemisphere, and The Moon Northern Hemisphere, and, Sure Enough, the pictures look different.

I have seen a new feature on the moon. On the right, below and a slight part of Tycho Crater, is a "man, sitting on a stone loveseat". He looks like he is looking at his left arm, looking at the time. He must be lonely waiting for his LADY FRIEND. Late again???

Thanks for the different view. He would otherwise be sideways from what I see of the Moon, and I would not have noticed.

:---[===] *

[FloridaMike]

I guess a video of moonrise from the equator would blow northern and southern hemispheric minds.

[Anthony Barreiro]

I watched the video before I read the caption, and it looked like a composite image, with one layer for the foreground people and another layer for the magnified image of the Moon. Even with the Moon illusion, the Moon looks much too big relative to the people, and there is way too much detail visible on the Moon's surface. I was resisting the impulse to write one of those tedious "this is not up to apod's usual standards" comments.

Then I read the caption. This video was shot through a telescope two kilometers away from the silhouetted people on the mountaintop?! Bravo! Well done! From two kilometers distant, the people would have tiny angular dimensions, accounting for how much smaller they look than the half-degree wide Moon.