It is the work of Andrew McCarthy, an American photographer specializing in astrophotography, and his original title would literally be something like “Enhanced Moon.” Although we would better translate it as “Moon with relief” since, as can be seen, it is a photo of our satellite in which the reliefs have been exaggerated of its geographical features to offer a Moon that is both spectacular and disturbing.
To do it, the photographer made a mix of real image with another generated by computer which was created using lunar crater height data provided by NASA. For Andrew, who defines himself as “just an ordinary boy with a telescope,” the image is not much of a mystery: “The photos I used were for the color and texture that I aligned the height map with on a sphere using 3D modeling software“.
“I used two different full moon photos for it -keep going- each of which was a composition of many thousands of frames. Mind you, these images played a considerably lesser role than the NASA data, as all the shadows were rendered in the software. […] By exaggerating the elevation of the moon’s features, you can really show how different the cratered highlands are compared to the smooth basalt of the lunar seas.“.
In case you are wondering, as NASA itself says, the craters of the moon are due to the impact of asteroids in her. However, contrary to popular belief, the Moon does not attract more meteorites than the Earth (nor has it saved us from certain destruction); what happens is that our planet “it has processes that erase almost all evidence of past impacts. Not the moon. A very small mark made on the surface of the moon will remain there“.
The truth is as it has no atmosphere, the moon has almost no erosion, With which “it has no wind, it has no weather, and surely it has no plants. Almost nothing can remove the marks on your surface once made. The dusty footsteps of astronauts who once walked on the moon are still there, and they won’t go anywhere for now“according to NASA.
And of course, if the tracks have not been erased much less will the craters that can be seen on this moon recreated by Andrew, of which, by the way, a copy can be obtained through his website.
In that same if you a lot of very interesting astronomical images are for sale like the recreation of the complete sequence of partial lunar eclipse which took place in mid-November and which the photographer turned into the spectacular photo you see above.
Andrew McCarthy | Website | Instagram
Photographs by Andrew McCarthy reproduced with permission of the author for this article