Andrew McCarthy, an astronomer, spent a month chasing the Moon in order to create a gif that captures the beauty of its movement. He put together a spectacular look at how it “dances in the sky” using over 2 million individual photos. This dance, known as libration, is caused by the Moon’s slightly tilted axis and elliptical orbit around Earth.
McCarthy set out to make his own because he’d never seen a high-resolution gif of the lunar libration and rotation at zenith. For 26 days, he had to photograph the Moon as it passed through the zenith every 25 hours. He found himself driving around Arizona to get the best view of the Moon based on the weather forecast. However, as we all know, the weather can be unpredictable. “One night, clear skies were forecast, but I got rained on.” “I was shooting through a dust storm another time,” he tells us.
And the difficulties didn’t stop there. “Postprocessing was difficult because conditions changed from day to day,” McCarthy admits, “so I had to match sharpness, contrast, and noise levels from day to day, despite each image being of vastly different quality.” McCarthy persisted, however, and created this one-of-a-kind look at the Moon. It’s his biggest project of the year so far, and he hopes it will instill in others the same love of the Moon that he has.
“I thought the motion would tell a really nice story about the dynamic presence of the Moon around Earth.” I’m very passionate about spreading my love for the Moon, because I believe that establishing a human presence there would garner more public support if everyone felt the same way I do.”
McCarthy, in addition to the gif, has revealed the process of creating the imagery in a behind-the-scenes video posted on his Instagram and TikTok. He also used the vast amount of photographic material he shot to sell a limited edition print of every frame of the lunation.
Andrew McCarthy, an astronomer, demonstrates how he created a gif of the Moon’s libration.
He also produced an incredible image with every frame captured during his month following the Moon.
Andrew McCarthy: Website | Instagram | Patreon | TikTok | YouTube
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