“The final supermoon of 2024, the Beaver Moon of November was the last of four consecutive supermoons this year, a series that began with August’s Sturgeon supermoon. The Moon’s surface material, known as regolith, has subtle color differences dictated by the mineral composition in any particular area. This mineral distribution on the lunar surface was mapped in great detail by the US Clementine probe in 1994, but you can post-process images of the Moon showing these colors without having to launch a spacecraft to do so – which is exactly what I did here!!
Again…following Ann Chavtur’s lead…
Inspired by Ann Chavtur’s processing of a mineral moon last month and spurred to action by Patty’s comment during dinner on how spectacular Ann’s image was, I came home from dinner and set up the Canon 5DSR with the Tamron 150-600mm lens on a tripod and captured a few photos of the Beaver Supermoon (at 99% full on Saturday night).
I captured a few images and then Googled how to process it as the beautiful mineral moon image that Ann had created. Saturday evening I read through a BBC Sky at Night article (https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/astrophotography/astrophoto-tips/create-a-mineral-moon-astrophoto and on Sunday morning on the spin bike watched a SarahMaths Astro YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TZH_4Lx_mQ. I combined the two sources of information into my own workflow.
The “rest of the story” including some interesting information and a link to more details on moon geology is in the gallery post at: https://beersastrophotography.com/gallery/beaver-supermoon-as-mineral-moon/