Very Young Crescent Moon
Thinnest moon I've ever seen personally.
This is by far the thinnest crescent moon I’ve ever seen. I never did see it naked eye, though, my old eyes needed some help from binoculars to find it. I was impatient; I started looking about an hour too early. Then I was patient, and I could finally see Venus (lower right) and about 15 minutes later the moon was just visible in the binoculars.
I had the camera set up and ready to go. 300mm Canon lens on the Sony a7R IV, carefully focused on Venus at first because the moon was quite dim against the bright sky. But the sky darkened as the moon wen tower in the WNW, and this was the next to last shot I took (ISO 400, 1/100th second, f/2.8). Fortunately, the Canon 300mm is a wonderfully sharp lens, even wide open at f/2.8.
I played games with ISO/shutter speed/aperture the whole time, just in case (clouds were building in, just to heighten the drama). But in the end, a darker sky, a reasonable ISO, a great lens wide open, allowed a shutter speed fast enough to avoid any chance of blur.
The above is a crop to show the moon and Venus as clearly as possible; here’s the full frame:
I like this perspective. It captures the dimness of the enterprise, the tree line provides some sense of scale. Mercury was above these two, but I never got a chance to see it as the clouds were covering the sky, barely above this frame.
Here is a 200% view of just the moon itself:
Despite the low angle (and thus the large amount of atmosphere I was photographing through, there are indeed some details on the edge of the moon.
Exquisite. Serene.