Every 18 years, the moon reaches “perigee” in its orbit at the same time as the vernal equinox (start of spring in the northern hemisphere).  This is dubbed the “supermoon” (or more precisely, the ‘perigee moon’) because it appears somewhat larger than the usual full moon (about 15% — not enough to notice without some accurate point of reference).  Nevertheless, because it does cause slightly higher tides than normal (the moon’s as close to us as it gets, basically), there are those who predict the usual doom and gloom will result.

All that resulted here is this six-panel mosaic of this year’s ‘Supermoon’, approximately 10 hours after perigee.  Each panel is a single 1/4000th second exposure using the modified Canon 500d through the C14 with an f/6.3 focal reducer (yielding f/7, or about f=2500mm).  I elected to work in monochrome and put a 2″ red filter in front of the optical train, to try and reduce the effects of the poor seeing a bit (and bring the brightness down to where the sensor was not everexposed even at 1/4000th second).  To my surprise, this caused the poles to appear a bit darker than I would have expected.

And here is an “HDR” image of the perigee moon rising over the trees…

An “HDR” image is an image made from multiple exposures of varying exposure time to capture scenes where there is a very large difference between the brightest and darkest areas.  This was made from single exposures ranging from 1/20ooth to 8 seconds through an Astro-Tech AT72 refractor, using a modified Canon 500d.  The skyglow from Philadelphia makes a nice contrast to the deep color of the rising moon.