A Rare Clear Sky Tonight

Unlike any other night in recent memory, tonight's sky appears to be crystal clear!

We were at Shaw's to do our weekly shopping tonight (not in Waterbury, for a change) and to get our flu shots (last week was COVID shots) and, when we stepped out of the store, we were greeted with a very bright and noticeably sharp moon low in the sky.  I knew that when I got home, if it was still clear, I would be attempting to capture another photo of the moon.  

Well, surprisingly, it was still clear when we arrived home so I put together a combination of lens and camera body that I have not used yet other than for capturing only a few photos of birds in our backyard.  I truly expected Waterbury to be cloudy when we got back home so I was quite surprised to see we also had clear skies here at home.  Using this combination of lens and body would be interesting especially handholding this very long, heavy and unwieldly combination.  

For this photo, I reluctantly used a Panasonic G9 body (this camera typically would not be one of my top choices but I think I wanted a challenge since I am bored with shooting photos of the moon without using a telescope so I chose a camera body that has a sensor on the smaller side which, if I'm going to be honest, lacks tonal depth so it is a challenge getting acceptable results...  as an aside...  whenever I start to come to terms with these four-thirds sensors and start to think I can make it work just fine, I pick up one of my camera bodies with a larger sensor and I kick myself for wasting time with the smaller four-thirds sensor because the larger sensors are truly that much better).  I also grabbed my Canon L 400mm f5.6 lens which is an exceptional lens but one which also would provide a challenge since this lens mount is non-native to this Panasonic G9 camera body.  When you use a non-native lens, you should expect some operational problems or quirks.

Another challenge is that even though I was using a non-native lens, I used autofocus which I never use for photos of the moon.  I usually focus manually especially when using a non-native lens but decided to test the autofocus capabilities of the Panasonic G9 body.  Shockingly, the autofocus adapter worked just fine though!

Actually, I typically avoid using any of my camera bodies that have this smaller four-thirds inch sensor for something like this because, well, these particular sensors are smaller than I prefer which consequently provide a significant lack of tonal depth when compared to my cameras with larger sensors.  I seem to never get acceptable results when using these camera bodies for lunar photos but this one landed in the "acceptable" range for some reason.  I suspect the crystal clear skies helped significantly.  This makes me wonder how much better this image would have been if I had opted to use one of my better cameras with a larger sensor...  perhaps I wasted my time again in using a four-thirds sensor.

Ironically, although I never use autofocus for capturing photos of the moon, as I mentioned above, the autofocus on the Panasonic G9 seemed to work just fine so that is a plus for the Panasonic G9 body.  The resulting photo is sharp too which was a very nice surprise especially since I did not use a tripod to keep the camera steady and instead handheld the camera while leaning on our living room window.  

Also worth mentioning is that the sky was so clear that the moon was noticeably brighter than I've seen it in years.  Since the moon was so bright, I was able to use a very fast shutter speed of 1/3200th of a second while keeping the ISO at its lowest setting of 100.  With a shutter speed this fast, I could probably jump up and down while shooting the photo and still capture a sharp image.  This fast shutter speed definitely helped me get a sharp photo while hand-holding this long lens.

I'm sort of wishing I had the energy to head out there to set up a good telescope for some additional imaging but something like that doesn't happen unless I plan for it and pump extra medicates all day to keep my health stable.  

Later at night when I got up out of bed to use the bathroom (yes, I'm old and make multiple trips to the bathroom through the night), I peeked out our living room window...  The sky was still crystal clear and full of stars.  That was a sight I haven't seen in at least a few years.  It would have been a perfect night for astronomy.  And, to see a sky full of stars from inside the house while we have a bright full moon lighting up the sky means it must have been an exceedingly rare once-in-a-decade or once-in-a-generation clear sky!  It really would have been a perfect night for astronomy.