As an amateur astronomer who has looked directly at the moon through a telescope hundreds of times, this photo looks strange and artificial, though I know it's not. I pondered why this was for a bit, and came to the conclusion that its otherworldly quality is actually due to being superior to what one can see directly. At any one moment, direct observation will have artifacts of the air moving between you and the target object. This picture quashes all of that at once, lending an "uncanny valley" feeling I think spurred by the fact that my brain just isn't used to that level of fidelity looking at a real object. This work is fantastic.
No no, it is strange and artificial. The stars are comped in from something else, and the moonglow looks like a gaussian blur. Still, it's pretty, and has hopefully inspired people to go stare at the moon.
To be fair, most astrophotography is "enhanced" one way or another - I can spend hours screwing around with a single DSO shot after stacking.
Here's a quick and dirty 30 second reconstruction using a shot of the moon from last summer, acquired in much the same way as OP - except using an EdgeHD 14 with an EOS 7D in video mode. It's pretty crap as last year was my first foray into planetary imaging - I usually do DSOs.
Amateur astronomer here as well that has also done a bit of lunar photography. (envious of your EdgeHD 14...)
I made a similar comment about the moonglow, but thinking a bit I think it's a combination of:
- Higher dynamic range than the human eye (combination of stars, moonglow, and high contrast lunar surface both in shadow and in sunlight)
- High resolution imaging, and the digital signal processing aspect (noise reduction, deconvolution, etc.)
They combine to make something that looks kinda like reality but is really a mix, and maybe triggers a little bit of the uncanny valley effect.
