The Moon In Colour
October 31st 2011 03:00
Category: Moon
The Moon in Colour
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When the Moon is rising the Moon can appear to be have slight hue depending on the time of day and seasonal conditions.
The Moon is rich in colour yet we cannot fully see the Moon’s colour because our atmosphere scatters most of the light coming from the Moon’s surface.
Our atmosphere partially blocks most of the Moon’s subtle colour. The particles in the atmosphere refract certain wavelengths of light, and permit other wavelengths to go through.
When the Moon is rising we are seeing the light from the Moon go through the denser portion of the atmosphere therefore it appears yellow. The light at the blue end of the spectrum is diffracted away, while the red light goes through without being scattered.
This is why the Moon appears to take on a reddish hue as it rises higher in the sky. The Moon light is not diffracted as much when the Moon is high up in the night sky. The atmosphere is less dense at high altitudes, the light from the Moon takes on a yellowish hue.
Harvest Moon
Our Sun undergoes a similar effect during sunrise and sunset.That’s why the Sun appears to have a more red yellow hue at sunrise and sunset.
Most of the early Moon images taken during the early 1960’s by space craft were in monochrome. Later as other space craft orbited the Earth and later orbited the Moon images began to appear in colour.
The very first Apollo mission gave us our first glimpse of the Moon in colour. It is possible to photograph the Moon in colour here on Earth with digital camera and a telescope colour images of the Moon can be achieved, the colours on the Moon are real.
The method I use is to take multiple images of the Moon through a telescope and then stack them into one image. My final image was slightly amplified during processing to make colours more definitive.
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The gray appearance we see comes from the surface of the Moon which is mostly oxygen, silicon, magnesium, iron, calcium, aluminum and cobalt.The lighter colour rocks are usually plagioclase feldspar, while the darker rocks are pyroxene.
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