This Breathtaking 80-Megapixel Image Of The Moon Was Made From 50,000 Photos
The moon may be a regular fixture of our night sky, but it's definitely not every day that we get the chance to see it in such incredible detail like this:
The capturing of this image was no small feat for photographer Andrew McCarthy. In fact, it took 50,000 photos and two cameras.
The 81 Megapixel image above is made up of nearly 50,000 images that have been stacked and processed in Photoshop. The A7 II was used to capture the earthshine and the stars, while the ZWO ASI 224MC was used to capture [sic] all of the detail in the moon itself. Andrew needed to capture almost 50,000 images so that he could average out blurring, and atmospheric turbulence.
It's also the result of many, many hours of work:
When it comes to stacking, Andrew stacked the images using Autostakkert, sharpened them with Registax, and stitched them together with Photoshop […] Andrew told me that the acquisition took him about an hour, the software processing/stacking around two hours, and the manual processing between three and four hours.
McCarthy's composite artistry isn't limited to capturing the moon in all its lunar glory. Earlier this year he also created this beautiful image of the solar system, which includes images of the moon, Venus, Mars and Saturn:
[Via PetaPixel]
