A new image of the Moon has gone viral on social media for revealing its craters and ridges illuminated by the Sun. Astrophotographer Darya Kawa Mirza shared the image on Twitter and wrote "one of the sharpest moon images I ever captured through an 8-inch telescope."
Darya told Newsweek the image was taken using a Celestron NexStar 8SE with a Canon EOS 1200D attached to it. "I started shooting 360 raw images then I combined them into one to reveal the colour and increase the sharpness as well as the clarity of the surface."
The image is being praised for showing the illuminated section in great detail and colour. It also reminds people the Moon is not white and grey as it may seem from Earth. The viral picture shows blue and pink shades that almost make it look like an illustration.
The photo has received over 62,000 upvotes and around 1,000 comments in a week. Many Reddit users are calling it the most beautiful picture of the moon.
A month ago, space photography enthusiast Andrew McCarthy and planetary scientist Connor Matherne revealed another detailed picture of the moon which also had similar details with round craters and pink-blue tones. They said the "ridiculously detailed picture" was the result of 200,000 frames taken over two years.
The duo described the colours as Moon tinged red and gunmetal blue. The red patches are iron and feldspar oxidised by errant oxygen atoms from Earth, said McCarthy on Twitter. He added that the colours are technically the Moon's true hues even though they may look false. Naked human eyes are not sensitive to see them and McCarthy used a saturation boost to bring out the colours.
Speaking about the lengthy editing process, he told NPR that the image is assembled like a mosaic and each tile is made up of thousands of photos.