50 Full Moons: A Quadrennial Journey

I present to you the result of the longest project I had undertaken and completed till date. The data for this image was captured over 4 years and marks my entire astrophotography journey. I was able to capture all the 50 full moons between October 2020 and October 2024. In the first week of October 2020, I bought a Sigma 150-600 lens and the blue moon of the month was my first proper moon image. Afterwards, I captured each and every full moon. And given the weather conditions, it did not come easy. While some nights were easy and imaging sessions would be over within 30 minutes, there were many full moons where I had to wait for almost whole night to get a glimpse of the moon, especially during June-October months.

Over these 4 years, I accumulated over 600 GB of data for this image. The thought process behind the arrangement began in 2023 and after many trials, I finalized on this composition. The complete processing took a little more than 3 months. Blending astronomy and mythology into one image, the moons are arranged in the shape of a Triple Moon symbol, a symbol that is used in Celtic mythology. The symbol shows a full and new moon (together), a waning crescent and a waxing crescent.

The centre part of the image is a blend of all the 50 moons. Rather than going with a strip-style arrangement which I have done a few times before during 2021, I went with a more artistic rendition by combining all the layers in multiple blending mode and recombining those with varying opacity. The blurriness is indicative of the moon's libration and changing apparent size.

All the images are taken with the same camera (Nikon D5600) and the same lens (Sigma 150-600c) at the same focal length (600mm). The final rendition has kept the relative size of each moon accurate to show the changes. Each moon is a stack of 250 images.

Equipment: Nikon D5600, Sigma 150-600c
Exif: f/6.3, Varied shutter speed (1/150s-1/800s), Varied ISO (ISO 100-ISO 250), 600mm
Location: Kolkata, India
Date: 31st October 2020 - 17th October 2024

Hope you enjoy the image.

Nikon D5600, Sigma 150-600c

PIPP, AS3, Photoshop, ACW