M is for Moon
Background
Platteville, Wisconsin is host to the "World's Largest M". I've seen many pictures where people photograph a large moon next to some other foreground object, typically buildings or landmarks. I've never seen one by the M. With my love of photography, astronomy, and the lure of attempting a difficult shot, I decided to take on the project. Faced with an ever-growing list of constraints, it's a good thing that patience is a virtue.
Logistics
The M is drawn on the tallest hillside in the area about 4 miles northeast of Platteville. It faces southeast. There are ample viewing opportunities from Platteville and from roads on that side of town. Beyond that, and in the rugged "driftless region" terrain, high ground with no obstacles in the way will give a good view.
Google Street View Link, or up close.
In order to get as big a moon as possible, a zoom lens is required. I have a 20-megapixel Samsung NX300 DSLR with the standard 18-55mm lens. This lens isn't good enough. I also have a FD-to-NX adapter, with a classic (1970's) 50-200mm zoom lens, and a slightly-newer 500mm reflective lens. I have a FD-mount "doubler", which can bring the zoom up to 400mm or 1000mm. A typical tripod and a remote shutter finish off the necessities. And of course, there are upgrades along the way.
To contact me about the project, email me at: hickokd@gmail.com
Timeline
Late March, 2015
I find two handy sites:
Moon tables from timeanddate.com - These show the time and angle for each moonrise and set.
Google Maps area calculator - Map angles very accurately (among other things). No longer available as-of 2016.
SunEarthTools - Replacement site for mapping angles.
I know the project is possible, but already know a few constraints:
Constraint - The moon rises at different angles in a monthly cycle. It peaks around 65 degrees (same angle as Co. Rd. B leading to it) and 115 degrees. So shots cannot be at less than 65 degrees.
Constraint - The M faces southwest. At angles above 100 degrees, the left leg of the letter starts to get obscured by trees and it looks really crunched horizontally. This further limits shots to between 65 and 100 degrees.
Constraint - Only moon-rise happens at these angles. That means I need to predict where the moon will be before it's visible, and be ready for it to rise.
Using the two sites, and a few places I know of with good views of the M, I construct a list of opportunities, one of which happened very soon.
April 3rd
Moonrise at 6:53pm, 95 degree angle, sunset at 7:26pm, full moon.
I got to the site a bit late. The moon was too far away, so I had to use the normal 18-55mm lens. My calculations didn't seem very accurate, but figured I'd try again at the next opportunity. (I was using the online tables, which are for Madison and round to the nearest whole degree.)
April 16th
Moonrise at 4:59am, 92 degree angle, sunrise at 6:22am, sliver-moon.
I excitedly got out of bed early and was well prepared. Although the forecast said almost no clouds, there were enough in the direction of the M. They completely blocked the sliver-moon until it was high in the sky.
Constraint - Weather. The sky needs to be absolutely clear to the East.
Constraint - The M isn't visible unless there's some light. This rules out shots in the middle of the night, but HDR could be used to combine a short exposure (bright moon) and a long exposure (M and landscape) if there's enough ambient light.
Opportunity - The only way a night shot could happen is if they light up the M. This happens once each semester, once for homecoming in fall and once for a dance in spring, sometimes with fireworks too. They also light it up with pink spotlights in October for breast cancer month. I'm keeping an eye for these events, since they enable me to shoot during night-time hours when them M isn't normally visible.
April 17th
Moonrise at 5:35am, 85 degree angle, sunrise at 6:17am, sliver-moon.
Shot from a closer location to the East of Platteville, and it didn't work because the moon wasn't visible.
Constraint - The 500mm zoom lens cannot be used on the East side of Platteville. With less zoom, the moon is smaller, so shooting locations should be West of Platteville at a minimum.
Constraint - Cannot see moon within about 3 days of a "new moon". The sliver of light is too small and the sunlight is too bright to see it at low latitudes.
I stuck around and captured a sunrise HDR instead. (Angle to the M is about 82 degrees.)
April 30th
Moonrise at 4:45pm, 93 degrees, full moon.
Shot from the same location as the 16th, except with a clear sky this time. Due to the clear and bright blue sky, the moon wasn't even visible until 5:11pm. Checking Stellarium later, it didn't actually rise until 4:51. Since the moon rises 1 degree about every 6 minutes, that means it was only more than 3 degrees above the horizon. It was too high.
This image enhances the moon, and it's still quite faint. You can see white shading closer to the horizon. The moon isn't visible through that extra daytime atmosphere.
Constraint - Daytime shots will not work. The moon isn't visible until it's too high, because the blue sky is too bright. This limits my options to morning and evening shoots, which means either sliver moons or full moons.
Constraint - For the shot I want, I have less than 10 minutes to get it after moonrise. I need to be in the right place, at the right time, with the camera ready to shoot.
Setback - Test shots reveal that my 500mm reflective lens doesn't seem to have good quality. The images are still blurry at the best focus, likely due to the mirrors not being perfect. The 200mm lens (with the doubler) is my best bet for clarity at this point.
500mm Reflective Lens.
Constraint - Wind. It was fairly breezy, and it shakes the tripod and camera enough to cause motion blur. (With a high-powered zoom, even vibrations are noticeable several seconds after touching any part of the assembly.) I'm not sure how to address this yet.
I learned a lot from this trip! My data wasn't accurate enough, my lens wasn't clear enough, and my timeframe for the shot is limited to sunrise and sunset.
Using the scripting abilities of Stellarium, and plugging in my exact coordinates, I have it list out all opportunities when both the sun and the moon are near the horizon. It happens about every two weeks -- either when there is a new moon, or when there is a full moon. I have a spreadsheet that lists all the details.
May 12th
Today, +/- 1 day, was a great time for a different M-and-Astronomy type of shot. The sunrise would line up perfectly with Co. Rd. B. So if you park along the road, the sunrise would be at the end of it, with the M to the right of the road.
Google Street View link to get an idea of what it could look like.
I'm not aiming for sunrise pictures though, so I didn't roll out of bed for this one.
May 15th
Decent opportunity for a sliver-moon shot, but was overcast.
Constraint - Haze. I notice that most mornings, it's so hazy that I cannot see the M from my candidate locations West of Platteville. So even if there's no clouds, there might be too much haze. In fact, this will make it nearly impossible to get a sliver-moon (sunrise) shot this summer unless I'm fairly close to the M. In that case, the haze could make for a more interesting picture. It's worth a try, at least.
June 2nd
Moonrise at 8:38pm, 115 degrees 48', sun below horizon, full moon.
While scouting for a location at this angle, I find a new constraint.
Constraint - Trees. They've grown leaves now. The M has trees on both sides, and they are close enough to impact visibility. At angles beyond 90 degrees (such as from Lancaster), the left leg of the M is covered by trees. Even at 82 degrees, the picture from April 17th shows bare trees over parts of the leg. This reduces the possible angles I can shoot from so much that I won't be able to get a full-moon shot until this fall.
The moonrise was amazing the couple of nights that I saw it. The sky was clear. But the angle was way too steep to see the M, so no pictures.
June 13th
Moonrise at 3:33am, 74 degrees 0', sliver moon.
Quite early, but there might be enough light to see the M within a half-hour. This would need to be a composite of two shots, moonrise and landscape, without moving the camera between them. This would be similar to a HDR photo. But, it didn't happen -- the weather forecast was expecting fully overcast conditions, so I didn't even try.
Observation - It also occurred to me, perhaps a bit coincidental, that I work in the same building as That Tree, LLC. He is famous for photographing 1 tree for 365 consecutive days, and turning it into a business. For my project, I'll probably spend 365 consecutive days trying to get my 1 photo, with no fame or fortune from it.
July 2nd
Moonrise at 9:08pm, 113 degrees 45', full moon.
Too steep of an angle to see the M. At most, you'd see the right leg of it. On the bright side, this is the summer solstice, so the angles will start moving back in my favor.
Upgrades - I found a better Kalimar 500mm lens at a pawn shop for $28 (clearance price), which required a $10 adapter to mount it on the camera. It's 13 inches long and includes a tripod mount on it. The quality is probably lacking compared to modern lenses, but modern lenses generally run in the $1,500 range too. I also received a bigger and better tripod from my parents (free), which was previously used for a VHS camcorder. It's rock solid and very stable! Fully extended, it's 6 feet tall. Here's the before and after photos:
Testing out the new lens, here's a full-frame (no cropping, but did scale down) shot of the full moon through some branches. This gives an idea of the size and quality of the moon whenever I do get my final shot.
It's not all good news. There's some new constraints as well.
Constraint - Heat. In testing out the zoom lenses, I observed that heat waves are distorting the image. (See a writeup on heat waves here.) Since my ideal time for the shoot is a clear evening when a full moon rises, it also implies that the sun will have baked the ground up to that point. Heat will be a problem for full-moon shoots. Perhaps in winter months it won't be so bad.
Constraint - Corn. It'll be knee-high by the 4th of July, and probably higher than my new 6' tripod by August. Most of my shooting locations are on roadways by fields. It doesn't get harvested until October at the earliest. If I can't figure out a way to get taller than the corn, I won't be able to shoot.
July 12th
Moonrise at 2:55am, 67 degrees 33', sliver moon.
Since this one seems to work out well, I'll show the steps I go through for planning a shoot.
Step 1: Model the event in Stellarium. Here we see the moonrise time, angle, and what the moon will look like.
Step 2: Plot the angle on a map. (Since I plot from the M, the angle is flipped over the 90 degree line.) I see two good intersection points: Hazel Dell Rd (just East of Platteville, not a main road) and 61 South of Potosi. Other roads which intersect probably can't see the M.
Step 3: Find a place. Since 61 is a main road, Google Street View is available. Here, it looks like I'll need to shoot around some power lines and possibly trees. Not a problem in the daytime -- but very difficult at 2:55am when it's all black. If I choose here, I'll need to mark the road somehow the day before.
This shoot is in the middle of the night, so it would need to be a HDR composite shot. One picture of the moon rising, and one picture as soon as there's enough light to see the M.
The haze has been especially bad recently, and I found out why. It's smoke from several Canadian wildfires. In the cool mornings, it sinks to ground level and you can even smell it.
Since my Potosi-area site is 15 miles from the M, the haze/smoke will probably block the view at that early-morning hour. My better option is to be close, and perhaps let the moon get slightly higher in the sky. For that reason, Hazel Dell Rd. is a better bet. It's too close for the 500mm super-zoom lens, so I'll be using the 200mm zoom instead. It's a similar location and setup as April 17th, but not as close to a new moon.
Step 4: Check the weather. After all that prior work, the weather shows 64% cloud cover, meaning it's highly unlikely I'll be seeing the moon when it rises. Thus, I won't be rolling out of bed in the middle of the night. Better luck next time, I hope!
August
The full moon shot (8/1) was still at too steep of an angle, and the sliver-moon shot (8/12) didn't work out due to weather.
I considered trying shots on 8/3 and 8/4 with a nearly-full moon. I'd need to frame the shot at dusk (around 8:30pm) and take a picture, then wait until 10:30pm or so to capture the moon, and combine the two into an HDR. Both weather and the idea of being on the side of the road for 2 hours kept me at home.
I also considered a trip on the 12th, during the Perseid Meteor Shower. The sky was clear and would've been perfect. Since I've been working toward high-zoom moon pictures with the M, I wasn't sure how I could frame the shot with the lenses I had. With my luck, a meteor wouldn't streak through the small portion of sky I'd need. I didn't go, but someone else did with a suitable pancake lens. Kudos to Andy McNeill for an excellent picture!
August 31st had potential for another full-moon shot, but the angle was still too steep.
September 10th
Moonrise at 4:10am, 73 degrees 24', sliver moon with Venus directly to the right.
This would've been a good picture. The angle is low enough to see all of the M. I planned to be on the East side of Platteville with the 300mm lens. The picture would've had the M on the left, sliver-moon in the middle, and Venus on the right. However, it was cloudy and raining at the time.
September 27th-28th
Moonrise at 6:48pm on the 27th, 89 degrees 27', full moon. Total lunar eclipse from 8:07-11:27pm.
Moonrise at 7:27pm on the 28th, 83 degrees 0', full moon.
First of all, I learned that my super-zoom isn't really a 500mm. Since my camera sensor is an APS-C type, it's smaller than the standard size, thereby giving it a 1.54x crop factor. The super-zoom is the equivalent of a 770mm lens on my camera.
Moonrise on the 27th didn't happen. It was too overcast, and I'm pretty sure the M wouldn't be fully visible yet at a 90 degree angle.
It cleared up for the eclipse. Here's a partial picture, and a "freshly full" eclipse picture showing the blue tint from the atmosphere. These also show what my inexpensive camera and super-zoom are capable of.
Moonrise on the 28th proved more successful. It was also overcast, but there was a gap towards the East. And it was getting quite dark 36 minutes after the sun set -- perhaps too dark for a f/8 super-zoom lens. But I finally had some success.
Here's a single 30-second exposure at ISO 200, further amplified and cleaned up in Darktable. The moon is blurred as it's rising, but not overexposed yet.
HDR is almost required in a scene like this, but it doesn't work well with movement. (Trust me, at this zoom level, the moon moves pretty fast! Motion blur happens in a 2-second exposure.) This picture is a composite of (1) A 30-second exposure for M and sky detail just before the moon rose + (2) A 1-second exposure to capture detail of the moon after it was up. It mostly works, but the clouds don't entirely match the moon's position. I might have better luck when there's no clouds present.
These pictures were taken from the intersection of CR B and Harrison Rd (slightly over 8 miles away from the M) (Google street view link), right by a farm where the cows were constantly mooing at me or at the owner for food. My takeaway lesson is this: I need more light in the scene, and hopefully less mooing cows nearby.
The trees must've been wilted enough to expose the left leg of the M. Leaves will be falling soon, corn will be removed soon, and heat doesn't appear to be an issue anymore, thus removing a few of my constraints.
October 10th
The moon is nowhere in sight, but the M is lit up beautifully to celebrate Homecoming. (Taken from Keystone Pkwy. using the super-zoom lens.)
Observation - The next morning I could see a sliver-moon fairly low. It might be possible to get my shot with a sliver-moon if it's clear enough. (This might eliminate my May 15th constraint.)
October 25th
Moonrise at 5:17pm, 86 degrees 23', full moon.
On the 25th, the sun was still in the sky. The 26th and 27th would've been darker, but those days were cloudy and rainy. Because I had to shoot on the 25th, the moon wasn't visible until it was higher in the sky. And because it was too high, I had to use my smaller 200mm zoom lens instead. Some success, though:
You'll note that the moon appears smaller than my pictures last month. The combination of less zoom and being only a couple miles from the M cause this change in perspective.
Another interesting note about this shoot: I was behind a church, on their property. I'm not sure if this would be considered trespassing. I assume not, since God would've been expecting me. I saw the light (and captured some of it) while leaving only footprints. Hopefully they don't mind.
November 9th
Moonrise at 4:40am, 99 degrees 44', sliver-moon.
Things looked great for this shoot. I scoped out a site with a perfect view 14 miles from the M. The forecast called for no cloud cover at all, and a low of 32 degrees. Cold enough, I thought, that any fog in the air would settle as frost. My equipment was loaded and the alarm was set. I was ready! But then...the alarm didn't go off.
Constraint - Murphy's Law.
At 6:30 when the sun was rising, I observed that it was too hazy anyway. The temperature didn't quite hit 32 degrees, and the M was barely visible at 8 miles away.
Maybe next month? Nope. I would need to be on the North side of Lancaster, which is too steep of an angle to see the letter. I'm not sure when my next opportunity for a sliver-moon shot will be.
November 24th
Moonrise at 4:09pm, 72 degrees 7', full moon.
The moon was covered in snow in the morning, but mostly melted through the day. The clouds were gone. Conditions seemed perfect and I had a good feeling about it.
Finally, some more success!
I was over 15 miles from the M, all the way down in Tennyson. (By Potosi, home of the famous brewery museum.) These images are cleaned up quite a bit. Conditions were far more hazy than I would've liked. When the moon was closer (or behind) the M, it simply wasn't very visible. Here's about as close as I could get:
And here is the full-frame unedited version -- what the eyes were seeing -- for comparison:
Winter and Early 2016
Surprisingly, the mild winter allowed the M to be visible for all potential shots. But they didn't work for another reason:
December 24 & 25: Cloudy.
January 23 & 24: Cloudy.
February 22 & 23: Cloudy.
March 22 & 23: Cloudy (and rainy).
April 21 & 22: Cloudy, and the angle is getting too steep (107 degrees), thereby ending my chances for the next several months.
In doing some practice shots elsewhere, I finally figured out why my camera takes blurry photos. It's not mirror-slap, because it's a mirrorless camera.
Constraint - Shutter-Shock. With the zoom lens mounted to the tripod, the camera is a teeter-totter. The motion of the shutter rocks the teeter-totter, which of course a powerful zoom lens will pick up as motion blur.
Comparing still images with a video frame, the video frame had better clarity. I tried adding a weight to the camera but it still happened. Video frames are noisy, but that can be smoothed out by averaging a bunch of them together. That's my plan for the next outing -- shoot video.
Summer 2016
I got bored waiting for the moon to come back, so I put something else in it's place.
This shot works so well that I plan to try it a few more times during fall colors, sunsets, storms, fog, etc. (Thanks to a friend for making suggestions on how to improve it.)
September 15th
Moonrise at 6:52pm, 100 degrees 51', full moon.
The left leg of the M isn't visible yet, but it's getting close! I was almost 5 miles from the M, along CR D. This validated my calculations -- I was standing exactly where the plotted line crossed, and the moon rose right behind the M. Honestly though, I prefer the second image. The moon is brighter when it's a couple degrees above the horizon.
Farmers kept driving by with curious looks on their faces. (They were busy in a nearby field.) I'm sure they figured out my intent after the moon rose.
October 14th
Moonrise at 5:56pm, 91 degrees 10', full moon.
Cloudy, but it worked. These are from Old Lancaster Road.
I ran down the road a bit and framed up the moon with a lone tree too.
October 15th
Moonrise at 6:32pm, 84 degrees 28', full moon.
I had a perfect location picked out. Not only did I have the moonrise, but it was UWP's homecoming and the lighting of the M. The plan was to shoot the moonrise, wait a couple hours and shoot the lighting, and combine the shots.
Well, it was completely overcast. No moon. And I almost didn't go for the lighting either.
I had an idea. I quickly did the math for my November location. Only one day seemed ideal -- November 13th. And only one location seemed ideal -- Hazel Dell Rd. What are the chances it would be clear that day? At the last minute, I took the gamble.
I didn't remember it was the 150th year, and I didn't know they'd put the number above the M. After the shoot, I didn't even touch the photos for a month. Here's two of them you'll be seeing again. The first is a freshly-lit M. The lamps don't last very long, and are usually faint by the end of the fireworks.
November 13th
SUPER-Moonrise at 4:37pm, 75 degrees 13', full moon.
Last month, I didn't know this would be an epic super-moon. My gamble paid off better than I could've expected. The light was perfect. The weather was perfect. The moon was perfect and bright. The M was perfect. My location was perfect. (Well, I could've been slightly more North.)
Observation - When I'm on the East side of town, I need to add a couple minutes to my calculations. The moon was up, but behind the mound.
Here's what I got:
And for good measure, in case anyone thinks I photoshop these images, I animated it. (Click the image below to see it.)
You can see the wind was shaking the camera bit that evening.
Behind the scenes:
The intent was to blend the images. Here's my "night and day" blend, with the 150th lighting on the left and the super-moon-rise on the right:
I don't think it's possible to improve on that without some serious equipment upgrades (better lens mostly) to improve picture clarity. A bucket truck might help too, so I can park anywhere and see the M.
Over the coming winter months, the M will probably be covered in snow. After that, the moon will be at too steep of an angle. My next possible moonshot wouldn't be until late summer or fall next year.
After 1 year and 8 months, I finally got the shot!