THE Super Blue & Mineral Moon

Image Name: THE Super Blue & Mineral Moon

Camera : Nikon D7500

Lens : Sigma 150-500 mm ( taken in 500 mm)

Tracker : Ioptron Skyguider pro, tracked at Lunar speed

Aperture f/11, ISO 400, SS : 1/125sec

Softwares- PIPP, Autostackert, Registax, Adobe PS

Location & Date: Kolkata , India on 30th August 2023 at 9.30 pm

Explanation : Whereas from India on the 30th night we saw 99.7% illuminated Moon & 31st night it’s 99.5% .

100 percent illumination was at 7 am on 31st August, which is the day time in India.

So I decided to capture on 30th at 10 pm because for the closest approach of moon A very very small area ( Left top corner still in shadow which can’t see in naked eye)

It could hardly be called blue, but in fact it was reddish and then yellowish.

The term 'Blue Moon' does not refer to the colour of the Moon, but it is just a statistical reference to the second full Moon occurring in a calendar month.

The term “Super Moon” is again a coincidence when the Moon is closest to Earth, and the Moon looks a little bit larger than usual (can’t be measured by the naked eye). Distance between Earth & Moon was 357181 km on 30th August.

A so-called ‘Mineral Moon’ image is a saturated color image of the Moon’s surface which indicates the presence of certain minerals in the lunar soil. So, the colour differences correspond to the variations in chemical composition of the lunar surface (mostly by variations in iron and titanium content). Blue areas contain high amounts of titanium, whereas brown/orange areas indicate an abundance of iron and iron oxide. As some of the craters have unusually dense concentrations of titanium, it is assumed that asteroids that impact on the Moon are rich in rare metals.

India’s Spacecraft Chandrayaan 3 landed on Moon on 23 August which is finding water & minerals.

Image Credit & Copyright: Anupam Naskar , India