Mental Games

Moon & Stars

Something you don’t see too often, a detailed picture of the full Moon surrounded by a rich field of background stars. It’s true that bright moonlight scattered by the atmosphere tends to mask faint stars, but pictures of the sunlit portion of the Moon made with earthbound telescopes or even with cameras on the lunar surface often fail to show any background stars at all. Why? Because the exposure times are too short. Very short exposures, lasting fractions of a second, are required to accurately record an image of the bright lunar surface.

Composite Image Credit: T.A. Rector, I.P. Dell’Antonio, NOAO, AURA, NSF

(Source: ikenbot)