"Our Mineral Moon"

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"Mineral Moon" refers to the image of the Full Moon in which faint surface colouration has been enhanced to reveal the mineral deposits on Moon. The region of Moon which faces the Earth is called the Near Side of the Moon. The Near Side is divided into Maria (dark regions) and Lunar Highlands (bright regions). The Maria is lower in Altitude than the Highlands. The dark material filling the Maria is solidified lava from earlier episodes of Lunar volcanism. The Maria are mostly composed of dark basalts, which form from rapid cooling of molten rock from massive lava flows. The blue tones in Maria reveal areas that are rich in ilmenite, which contains iron, titanium and oxygen, while the orange and purple colors show regions relatively poor in titanium and iron. The rocks in the Highlands are largely Anorthosite, which is an igneous rock rich in Aluminium and Calcium that forms when lava cools more slowly than in the case of basalts. This implies that the rocks of the Maria and Highlands cooled at different rates from the molten state and so were formed under different conditions. The highlands reflect more sunlight due to its elemental compositionn and hence have almost no color.

Equipment Used :

- Nikon D7200 (Stock, Unmodified)

- William Optics RedCat 51 Apochromatic Refractor, 250mm, f/4.9

- Amazon Basics 70 inch Tripod

Acquisition Details :

- Sub-Exposure : 1/640 s, ISO 100, 250 mm, f/4.9

- Lights : 124

- Flats : 0

- Darks : 0

- Bias : 0

Software :

- Pre-Processing : PIPP V2.5.9

- Stacking & Wavelet Filters : Registax V6.0

- Processing : Adobe Photoshop CC 2019

Location :

- Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India (Bortle 5)

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Astronomy & Astrophotography

"Mineral Moon"