Two astrophotographers teamed up to capture an extremely detailed photo of the moon.
What does it take to capture the "most ridiculously detailed" picture of the moon? Over nine months worth of work and up to 200,000 photos. That's what astrophotographers Andrew McCarthy and Connor Matherne had to endure to come up with a stunning photo that was shared on Reddit on Saturday, which has captured the attention of the stargazing community and the internet.
"The whole thing is assembled like a mosaic, and each tile is made up of thousands of photos," McCarthy explained to NPR the process of creating the "most ridiculously detailed" picture of the moon. McCarthy and Matherne first met each other over Reddit and later Instagram about three or four years ago, bonding over their work as astrophotographers.
But it wasn't until November 2021 when they decided to work together for a photoshop of the moon. It was their unique strengths and skills that made for a great team-McCarthy is an expert in detailed photographs having taken thousands of photos to capture the unique geographical features found on the moon's surface, while Matherne specializes in colors as he excels in shooting deep space photos.
How Two Astrophotographers Captured a Very Detailed Image of the Moon
To create the "most ridiculously detailed" picture of the moon, the two astrophotographers used a technology called "photo stitching," the New York Post reported. This required McCarthy to shoot more than 200,000 detailed photographs of the moon from Arizona, while Matherne took another 500 images from Louisiana to capture color data.
McCarthy and Matherne then had to use photo stitching, which is a process of connecting images together to create a bigger field of view. This fundamental technique has been used since the early years of photography, but now, thanks to the advent of high-powered computers, processing applications, and digital imaging, photographers can now seamlessly create such "stitched" photographs with better precision.
Matherne explained that McCarthy "aimed purely for the detail side" as he "aimed purely for the color side" and when put together, they were able to capture the full moon. But the process was not easy, as it took them nine more months to work together on the edits to create the best image they could.
Astrophotographers Honor the Upcoming NASA Artemis I Mission
McCarthy described their "most ridiculously detailed" picture of the moon as a 174 megapixel photograph that was "assembled like a mosaic" featuring each tile that is "made up of thousands of photos." The result of photo stitching is a stunning photo of the moon in full color, unlike any other way it was seen before.
McCarthy also named the image "The Hunt for Artemis" in honor of NASA's upcoming Artemis I mission, the first in several complex missions that would support human exploration of the moon and Mars. The planned uncrewed test flight for NASA's Artemis program is set to launch on August 29 from the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida.
