moon

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Photography

Sinister Sunrise Captured by Photographer Elias Chasiotis During an Eclipse in Qatar

Athens-based photographer Elias Chasiotis was visiting Qatar in late December 2019 when he captured a photo of an annular eclipse that has since gone viral. Taken at sunrise as a part of a series, the image shows the moon covering the center of a red sun. The timing of the photograph turns the crimson star into curved horns emerging from the horizon.

A self-identified astrophotographer and amateur astronomer, Chasiotis tells Colossal that the conditions were hazy on the morning of December 26 when the photographs were taken. The haze gave the sun its red glow, but as NASA astronomer explained on the Astronomy Picture of the Day blog, the Earth’s atmosphere helped create the full image: “The dark circle near the top of the atmospherically-reddened Sun is the Moon — but so is the dark peak just below it. This is because along the way, the Earth’s atmosphere had an inversion layer of unusually warm air which acted like a gigantic lens and created a second image.”

Chasiotis continued to photograph the eclipse as the sun rose, writing on Facebook that the “annular phase was blocked by clouds, but the red crescent sunrise was the most awesome sunrise I’ve ever seen!”

Design Photography Science

Chart-Like Composite Photographs by Dan Marker-Moore Show the Progression of the 2019 Solar Eclipse

Los Angeles-based photographer Dan Marker-Moore (previously) flew south to document the solar eclipse that occurred in Chile on July 2, 2019. While many professional photographers also documented the event, most images capture the singular moment in one image. Marker-Moore decided to break out the progression in orderly chart-like designs. He shares with Colossal that he experimented with over one hundred different format variants before deciding on the final five. Each image contains between 26 and 425 photos of the sun. Read more about Marker-Moore’s trip and the equipment he used here, and find prints of his eclipse series in his online store. The photographer also shares new work on Instagram.

Animation

A New Stop Motion Animation Chronicles a Captain’s Final Journey to the Moon

The Moon’s Milk is a fantastical stop motion tale by animator Ri Crawford that follows Captain Millipede on his final trip to extract milk from the moon as it begins to separate itself from the Earth. During the journey, relationships between the expedition members complicate, while enchanting connections happen in the liminal space between the sea and moon. The film presents two unique views—the one from the Earth, and the flipped perspective seen from the moon. The score for the film was created by Caroline Penwarden, the sound design by Richard Beggs, and singer Tom Waits served as the story’s narrator. You can take a look behind-the-scenes of film in the video below, and see more of his animations on Vimeo. (via Laughing Squid)

Update: The Moon’s Milk narrative is originally told in “The Distance to the Moon,” a short story written in 1968 by the iconic Cuban-Italian author Italo Calvino. You can listen to actor Liev Schreiber read the story in its entirety on Radiolab.

Design

A New 1,087-Piece LEGO Set Celebrates NASA’s 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing

Next month marks the 50th anniversary of NASA’s 1969 mission, which landed astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon. To celebrate the semicentennial event, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has teamed up with LEGO to release a 1,087-piece replica of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module. The model is equipped with both descent and ascent features and comes with with a base plate that mimics the surface of the Moon— including embedded square holes that match the astronaut figures’ foot prints. LEGO launched the sale of the model earlier this month. You can find this LEGO set and other NASA-inspired space modules on their website. (via designboom)

 

Photography

50,000 Photographs Combine to Form a Detailed Image of the Moon and Stars

Photographer Andrew McCarthy has transformed 50,000 individual images of the night sky into one very large and detailed photo of the moon. Every crater and lunar mare on the “light” side looks like it was shot from within the natural satellite’s orbit, when the image was actually created from a telescope and two camera setup 239,000 miles away in Sacramento, California.

McCarthy shares that his interest in the cosmos began as a kid when his father showed him the planets through his telescope, but it was a free telescope from Craigslist a few years ago that reignited his love and got him into astrophotography. His process involves focusing and refocusing on bright stars, taking photos in stacks at different exposure lengths, and switching between an astronomy camera and a Sony a7 II with a 300mm lens. He then loads the stacks into Photoshop and uses special software (and a manual process of duplicating, flipping, subtracting, and editing) to align and adjust the images to create the final product. “I’d love a new vantage, as the view from Sacramento is a bit far,” McCarthy tells Colossal. “If given the chance, I would love to be the first professional astrophotographer to image the Earth from the lunar surface.”

To see the full-sized image click a cropped version below, and to order prints of this or any of Andrew McCarthy’s astrophotography, visit his online store. (via PetaPixel)

Illustration

The Moon’s Magical Mythology Captured in an Illustrated Book by David Álvarez

In Noche Antigua (Ancient Night) an opossum and a rabbit work together—and against each other—to create and maintain the sun and the moon. The book, written in Spanish and illustrated by Mexico-based artist David Álvarez (previously) is based on elements from ancient myths in several Central American cultures. Álvarez captures a sense of quiet magic with the simplified forms and hushed tones of his illustrations, which seem to glow from the illumination of the moon. You can see more of the artist’s work on Instagram and his Etsy shop.