Astronomy / Space Supersaturated photo of our moon

Thought this was beautiful:
Photographer uses 150k moon photos to reveal its hidden colors

mooncolors-800x800.jpg


o7
 
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IR vision though wouldn't do much good for seeing the Moon in its actual colors, as the author of the photo says in that article the problem is that we lack enough sensibility in our cone cells (and enough cone cells at all) to be able to perceive colours so faint. He has been able to over-exaggerate them by stacking lots and lots of images, thus having a lot more data to enhance without making a noisy mess out of it, but you just need one good enough image of the Moon to already see that it's not really the greyscale landscape it appears to the unaided eye.

Took this one some years ago, it's just a single shot where sharpness, contrast and clarity/tone processing were enough to make a tenuous hint of colour starting to appear, without even starting to tweak actual colours and saturation:

25934464294_e9cc7a49ce_k.jpg

Then made a proper colour enhanced out of the same shot, with the original without clarity and tone processing for comparison:

16727128102_5eb157b87e_o.jpg

And since I also took some videos that evening, I tried to see how much more I'd have been able to crank up colours from several stacked frames. The answer was (unsurprisingly) "quite a bit", even though I largely prefer the sharper, more muted single-shot version of it:

GOorlIJ.jpg

Also, while looking at that photo in the OP's link, don't miss this other wonderful work from the same guy, it's a real beauty. :)
 
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So, I’m ignorant so help me out, what does these colors show us? The cheese has gone bad or what? :D

Don't be silly please. It's obvious that cheese can't go bad high up there in the void of space! :D

Conspirationists will want you to believe that colours depends on the different mineral compositions, with blue hues for the more titanium-rich areas and different shades of red where titanium content is lower and iron oxide is predominant. The reality is that the blue lunar maria are made of Roquefort, the reddish patches are instead vast plains of Red Leicester. The remaining grey is just a thin veil of cheese mould. :p
 
So, I’m ignorant so help me out, what does these colors show us? The cheese has gone bad or what? :D

brownish/purple is harmless, just spores spilling due to late picking. green would be bacterial infection, throw away and get a replacement moon.
 
Don't be silly please. It's obvious that cheese can't go bad high up there in the void of space! :D

Conspirationists will want you to believe that colours depends on the different mineral compositions, with blue hues for the more titanium-rich areas and different shades of red where titanium content is lower and iron oxide is predominant. The reality is that the blue lunar maria are made of Roquefort, the reddish patches are instead vast plains of Red Leicester. The remaining grey is just a thin veil of cheese mould. :p
Do not say it too loudly.

You will attract the Fuel Rats.

;)
 
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