A nearly full moon -- only four hours behind the exact phase -- is seen here, photographed at exactly 8 and-a-half degrees above my eastern horizon. I've taken care in digital post-processing to portray the moon as faithfully as possible to the view that I got visually through the telescope, before placing the camera afocally behind the eyepiece. The golden color is due in part to the low altitude the moon then held respective to the horizon, but it is also caused by a thick layer of Saharan dust particulate from the Lake Chad basin, now moving across my area in the Caribbean. While it is not unusual for us to get hazy, dusty skies between mid-April and mid-October each year, in recent years these events have become more frequent and intense.

Kodak EasyShare CX7300 digital camera looking afocally through a 76-millimeter terrestrial telescope at 22x.

GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) on GNU/Linux. (1) rotation to achieve the same lunar orientation that was seen visually through the telescope. (2) crop from the original at 2,080 x 1,368 to 1,800 x 1,200 to better center the moon, and to fit into a 3:2 ratio; (3) moderate levels adjustment to improve contrast.