How to Photograph a Mineral Moon

Mineral Moon! What is it exactly?
Looking at the Moon visually, we see it glowing intensely against the dark background of space. In reality, the Moon is quite dark and almost black in some areas. The intense light from the Sun brightens the surface so much it appears almost white from Earth. In pictures, with the right processing, we can actually bring out the colors of the minerals that compose the Lunar Landscape.
These various minerals include: Iron oxide, titanium dioxide, magnesium oxide, aluminum oxide, silicon dioxide, calcium oxide, and more.
Join me as we capture and process the Moon to bring out these colors in as real to life representation as possible.
Clear Skies!
Instagram: / insertastronamehere
Telescope: bit.ly/33nOFlh
Beginner Telescopes: bit.ly/35ihOOr

[@mglikeabossplaysMC]

3 years later and still a phenomal tutorial! Thank you for not only being thorough, but as concise as possible!

[@shaned7027]

Great tutorial man, glad KZbin recommended this to me years later!

[@donaldwhite4763]

Thank you so much for taking the trouble to create this brilliant tutorial. This was my first attempt at a mineral moon and it came out pretty well!

[@him1r]

1st time here, already a fan🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻

[@fernandotellez7690]

Brand new to the channel and Instagram. I'm blown away by your work! Amazing!

[@ahmethamdi1797]

Man u are amazing thanks for all of your nice videos , helps a lot !!!

[@Polaris97]

What an amazing tutorial! I've been looking for an easy to understand tutorial and finally found this! Thank you so much!

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I’m glad you enjoyed it!

[@HelenasAstrophotography]

This was super Matt! Really really helped me out. Happy New Year :)

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

I can’t wait to see what you can produce now ❤️

[@stellababy1998]

Wow…. so much to learn! Well done.😉

[@Wildicon19]

Wow Matt that was an awesome tutorial! There is a lot of steps from the raw image to the final shot however it is worth the work that went into this amazing photo of the Moon!

[@MattDieterich]

Great work Matt this is a helpful tutorial! Love those Moon shots!

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Appreciate it my man!

[@lawxr6eBay]

Thank You for this Video and the pics!!

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I’m glad you enjoyed it!

[@aurelianbohler1585]

Thank you for your great tutorial. I like the way you explain and talk about things. Have a nice day!

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Thank you for watching!

[@AstroSoundscape]

I recently followed this tutorial and it was the best explained I found. Thanks mate 🙏

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I’m glad you enjoyed it!

[@LucaLibralato]

Thank you very much for your detailed video!

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I’m glad you enjoyed it!

[@kavikantchavan]

Excellent details, thanks for sharing complete details 🙏

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I’m glad you enjoyed it!

[@RajSenpai]

Great video and tutorial!!!

[@unlucky5442]

Thanks for the video! Helped me out a lot

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Awesome! Glad you liked it!

[@matts0982]

Awsome Video mate 👍🏽👍🏽

[@back40observatory29]

Great video. I have attempted this using other tutorials but this worked out very well.

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I’m glad you enjoyed it!

[@kolhausen]

I'll remember "drizzle off" with a big ol' DSLR. Epic tip. ;) Great videos man! Thanks!

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I’m glad you enjoyed it!

[@rawesome1000]

I think the coldest I shot in this year was -25° batteries only lasted like 30mins each haha. Cool tutorial. Just started playing with the lunar side of Astro imaging and this was a great mineral moon explanation.

[@dragon1st]

Great thank you

[@thewibblywobblystuff]

Your video was great. Really enjoyed your style of going through things. Would love to know more about your astro editing workflow for getting better at editing. Like how you decide what things to adjust in which situations and why. I think that is what I'm weakest on of everything. Do you have any resources you could suggest for getting a better understanding of editing, particularly as it applies to astro? Either way, thanks for the great video!

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I’m glad you enjoyed it! As far as editing in Photoshop, imagine you have a canvas you are painting on. Now, you add a layer of clear paper on top and add some color or sharpening or whatever. Now you can delete that layer or make changes to it or whatever. Add another layer on top and repeat. Each layer can be independently adjusted on its own until you’re happy. The most important thing is to not over sharpen.

[@hansowerydberg]

Greetings from Sweden where we sometimes stand in -20 degrees Celsius. But the infinite beauty of the universe keeps one warm :)

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I’m glad you enjoyed it! This South Texas guy can’t handle that cold 🥶

[@discoverytraveller]

wooooooooooooow amazing work!! thank you so much for the tutorial, I'll try to follow it too!! love from India!! :)

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I’m glad you enjoyed it!

[@SuperKevinFS]

Great stuff

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I’m glad you enjoyed it!

[@jamesmcleod4335]

"we're just learning stuff all the time" X"D you daggum right we are. Loved the tutorial.

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I’m glad you enjoyed it!

[@michaelB44750]

Great look and outside the classroom facts of the how and not only showing off the impressive whats of the results. It reminds me of the night class I had taken on perfectly using all the manual numbers and his honor, Judge Histogram on my first DSLR a decade ago. My canon 50D has a 150-300 canon and my normally used l night one of a Tamron 200 with the better f-stop. I’m gonna dive into the Sigma 600 you referred to and showed off as it will give great results in diversity of both day and night looking and shooting nature around and much up above. Thanks and show with the facts away. Bring it.

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I’m glad you enjoyed it!

[@astrolivechannel3124]

Mineral Moon looks great.

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Thank you so much

[@abhimanyusingh2572]

Thanks a lot ! This was really helpful :)

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I’m glad you enjoyed it!

[@KaiYung]

Found your video while trying to tame my moon's chromatic abberation. By far the best PS camera raw workflow to bring out the color that I have seen. Thank you. Want to know more of how you fixed the that color cast issue.

[@letszoomit365]

Great video 👍 I am not a proffesional when it comes to editing so that part felt quite hard to me but I will give it a try 👌

[@danno1374]

Those gloves are awesome!

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

I don’t use them often in Texas, but I’m glad to own them. Lol

[@nicholaswoolsey461]

Awesome tutorial man!

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Hey brother! Greatly appreciated

[@credenvy1552]

0:06 We freeze our fingers off... Thats how... Great Fun!

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I’m glad you enjoyed it! Not fun for me. My blood wasn’t made for that cold 🥶

[@rgk3443]

Wow awesome

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I’m glad you enjoyed it!

[@blakeburdette3118]

Great video!

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I’m glad you enjoyed it!

[@marcocambray7725]

Awesome inspiring

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I’m glad you enjoyed it!

[@jpbonnelly6645]

This was awesome! I tried it with my Canon R5 and 400mm lens (and 1.4x to 560mm). Not quite the detail you got, but came out nicely. Need a bigger lens! Thanks again!

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Awesome! So glad it helped you!

[@walterlittle8879]

Debes ver esto! Vibes of cosmos, en youtube. The moon is earth.

[@billmeador215]

New to astrophotography............super video and very helpful............am I correct in assuming that to get images to edit for a "mineral moon" they have to be taken with a standard camera that shoots in RAW, and not a dedicated astro camera that saves the images as .fit files?

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

I don’t personally have experience with .FIT files, but if they are uncompressed and you can convert to TIFF, then you SHOULD be able to follow from there. But I’m just guessing.

[@billmeador215]

Thanks…..was able to use ASIStudio to stack video, export to .tif and then edit in PS. Clear Skies!

[@karthikneragal6507]

Which telescope do u own!! Btw superb video 👍👍

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

I use the Celestron C11

[@DeepakKumar-Welostinplaces]

Thanks for all the details on the video. Have a question, when i place the align points (by default settings) on AutoStakkert, i am having 297 APs with 160 size. Is that a good setting? Does it matter if i keep high number APs but lower size than yours?

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I’m glad you enjoyed it! The BEST thing to do is experiment. Even if you shot with the exact same equipment as me, any changes can affect the processing. So always run it through several times and compare the end results until you find a winner.

[@lawxr6eBay]

So , are these colors all Natural but hidden by the brightness and reflectivity of the surface? And You only brought out and enhanced colors right? Or did you add a little something extra ? Awesome either way 👍

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Nothing added. Natural may be a bit of a stretch but I would definitely go with “exaggerated” while still mostly accurate

[@HDplusplus]

Whoa. Loved the video. One question, can we get the same kinda colors if I use a telephoto lens on camera instead of a telescope?

[@cex7355]

Yes a telephotolens is basicly a small refractor

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Thank you so much. Yes. You can get a similar result. The biggest issue will be color fringing depending on the quality of the lens you use. It’s possible you might have significant green or purple fringing and you will have to adjust accordingly.

[@bwebb2012]

🤘🏼 Awesome!!! So glad you made this..You tha man!!

[@DavidStella]

Tried to check out your Instagram but the link is broken or something. Nice video btw

[@m.wilsonastrophotography4581]

Thanks so much for this tutorial, will put this info to use once I get my telescope. What’s the name of the music that plays during the video?

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

You’re very welcome. I’m not sure off the top of my head, but all the music is on the KZbin library for free usage.

[@tiickl3941]

thank you so much!!!!, just got a Nikon d5300 as my first dslr and finally got myself a decent moon shot thanks to you. Only with a 200mm lense tho lol but still im quite blown away and i might become addicted to doing astro stuff. R.I.P my bank account lol

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I’m glad you enjoyed it! Who needs money? Can’t take it with you when you die… 🤣

[@tiickl3941]

@@InsertAstroNameHere fair point sir 😅

[@malanstecker]

How and where does one save the stacked image from Astrostakkert 3? I stack and look at the folder where the original TIFF images were and see no stacked photo. Does the new stacked image have a name and where (what folder) is it located? I see no "Save As" in Autostakkert.

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I’m glad you enjoyed it! Do you not see a new folder in the folder of your import images? Should be a folder labeled AS_***

[@johnray854]

Oh he had so much to learn 0:22

[@davidmcdanel427]

You mentioned converting to tiff from raw, what if you shoot in tiff to save the middle man?

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

I suppose you could, but I have just always shot in RAW.

[@hozaifashakeel7758]

which photoshop version are u using?

[@tomtoka]

Are you shooting with dslr or zwo? I see zwo in speed up vidoe

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I used a DSLR. The ZWO was just added B-roll footage.

[@IntellectualKetchup]

lol Nice beginning. What makes things worse is the fact that everything within view of direct moonlight is always 10-15 degrees cooler than the shade. It sounds funny but you need to sit in the shade when you film the full moon, to stay warmer!! The moon and sun are electric anode and cathode. There is so much we were taught that is wrong! The moon is pulling up energy from the surface of earth. It is actually the focal point of the energy rising up. That energy gets sent to the sun and sent back down to earth. This might sound strange out crazy but I assure you that every human on earth can easily prove this to themselves, and this has been scientifically tested and proven for 100's of years. EDIT: I failed to mention that we also do not view the moon in it's location. It is actually a reflection of the energy coming up off the surface of earth and hitting the input location. Many old astronomy books talk about the fact that the moon is transparent and stars and planets can be seen through it at different times.

[@IvanVazquezS]

Hello! Maybe you will not read this since it's a 2 year old video, but following your tutorial there's a huge issue on my side: When I open the edited .tif file from Registax in Photoshop, when I crank up the calibration's saturation bars and the basic saturation and vibrance bars, my image gets saturated pretty fast and is virtually impossible to correct the white balance because there's a huge tint of blue and yellow on the moon. I have tried different export options from Autostakkert and Registax but the final .tif image that I open in photoshop doesn't give me the same freedom you show in your tutorial... as if somehow it contained much less color information. I must mention that if I do the same with a single raw image in photoshop (from the 100 I used in Autostakkert for the stack) it works fine and I get lots of color, just not as crisp because it is not the stacked image. Do you have any idea what could be the cause of this issue? any insight as little as it is could help. Thanks and wish you a nice August!!

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Hi Ivan. I hope you have a great August too! Cranking them all up SHOULD make it way over saturated. That is just to align the RGB histogram at the top. Also, you could just look at the surface features and kinda sorta balance it out by sight. Before saving and going to the next step, the Vibrance/Saturation should be brought back to Zero, and leave only the calibration saturation at 100. If that is not the step you are referring to, then please reach back out. Or if you tag a specific time in the video I can help you out further. Clear skies!

[@IvanVazquezS]

@@InsertAstroNameHere Hey thanks a lot for the answer!!! I will give some more details about my issue: Until the point where I crank up the 3 saturation sliders from calibration, the basic saturation slider and the vibrance one, I get a really saturated moon as you see in your own video at 11:40 so everything until now it's ok. The issue I have is that trying to adjust the white balance seems to not work for me. I just keep getting a very blue or a very yellow moon, with no in between.. so no matter what I do I can't get a "balanced" moon like at 11:48 (in my specific case, seems the blue channel is way off the other 2, so a true balance is never achieved when everything is still cranked up). I'm suspecting it has to do with the quality of my .tif files, or maybe my histogram was a bit darker than needed, or maybe PIPP processes differently the .NEF raw files from your camera compared to the .ARW files from my Sony, idk. If you have any idea let me know, otherwise anyway thank you very much for your support!

[@pissywilly]

Took a bunch of shots of the full.moon tonight pretty much same aperture as you but damn Microsoft ice is no longer available for download 😕

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Damn. I’m sorry to hear that. I wonder if there’s any way to download it elsewhere. I have found it is by far the best stitching software. I use it for milky way panoramas too.

[@Kyle_Hubbard]

Why did you do individual images? A lot of what I have read and what people have told me is that it's better to record the moon and then process for individual frames and then stack. A 60fps camera will have 60 frames a second and supposedly film mode auto sorts all the settings like ISO for you. I've yet to do it and I'm not saying what you've done is wrong or right, just curious as to why you did photos instead of film.

[@Kyle_Hubbard]

On a side note, do you have an up to date version of MS ICE? I just went to the microsoft website after hearing about this for the first time thanks to you but all their links for 32/64 bit are dead. "As of 2021 the program is no longer available for download from Microsoft"

[@bigdog1452]

@@Kyle_Hubbard Did you do video or images??

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I’m glad you enjoyed it! You can totally do video. The best thing is to experiment with multiple ways. I do video when I do high resolution imaging for craters and such. For the whole disk, that isn’t necessary. I have also heard that ICE was discontinued. That is horrible news 🥺

[@mundos.perdidos]

Which camera did you use?

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Nikon D750, but any dslr should provide nearly identical results. This biggest variable in shots like this is the lens/telescope.

[@stevestone07]

You facial video is in totally the wrong place to show the Post amendment for the pic??

[@JustaDadGamer]

I am a bigger fan :)

[@joebarela9586]

I’m trying to photo-stack the moon, but I am too zoomed in because of my telescope. Can I photo-stack the moon if I have pictures of the moon, but in pieces rather then the entire moon?

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Yes! You will use Microsoft ICE to stitch the images together. Ideally, you want to take all the data on the same night, stack the panels, and then stitch before doing any other processing work.

[@vyperpilot]

With an SCT scope and the camera at prime focus (no lens train), is there really chromatic aberration?

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

I misspoke about the CA. It’s more atmospheric dispersion probably. The corrector plate being a technical lens MIGHT affect it a little, but not near as much as my horrible humidity and turbulence where I live. Also, the extreme saturation enhancement is the only time it’s noticeable anyway.

[@vyperpilot]

@@InsertAstroNameHere I agree. "Chromatic" is a lens problem, but "comatic" is a mirror problem...even with parabolic mirrors. The corrector plate on your SCT is very nice...it corrects for comatic aberration. Nice vids!

[@richiel135]

Matt, grrrrrr have tried this on my 5Dmk2 my 1DSMk3 I am either too blue or too red. Very frustrating.🤦🏻‍♂️

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

So sorry for the late response. Obvious question first, are you shooting in RAW? And what scope/lens are you using?

[@richiel135]

Thank you for taking the time to reply. You must have loads to get through so really appreciate your time. Yes shooting in RAW using a skywatcher reflector and my canon lens

[@cex7355]

The intro song has grown on me

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

I rather enjoy it myself

[@PeterPfeiffer]

Thanks for this inspiration. I gave this a try and got sort of decent results using a Panasonic bridge camera. I tested 3 methods for overall processing, all three started with PIPP. #1 imported the 20 images int Autostakert, #2 all 20 into Registax, #3 all 20 into Photoshop Elements with Elements+ add on and used noise reduction stacking (PS median stacking). For my small sensor camera (600mm equivalent lens) #3 provided the sharpest results. However no where near the results you obtained. I'm shopping for a telescope in hopes that my reuslts will be better.

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

That’s awesome Peter. A lot of getting the best result is experimenting constantly. Even if you use the same equipment, sometimes conditions can change from night to night and you have to make adjustments constantly. Good luck with getting a scope!

[@jonathansmith7065]

Supermoon Bloodmoon Harvestmoon Wolfmoon Wheatmoon Cornmoon Pinkmoon Snowmoon Stormmoon And mineralmoon

[@seanmarczewski4095]

"Get your happy ass inside where it's warm." I hit the subscribe button immediately after that.

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I’m glad you enjoyed it! My humor makes up for the monotonous tone of my voice I think.

[@toshal5506]

As not all of us have photoshop, can you make a tutorial of mineral moon in gimp?

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Sorry for the super late response. I have never used GIMP. I guess I could give it a shot though.

[@toshal5506]

@@InsertAstroNameHere no worries lol

[@PixelSchnitzel]

I don't understand how you're drawing out the various minerals of the moon. It appears to me that you're just introducing artificial color distortions by working at the saturation limits of Photoshop. Help me understand how the colors relate to the mineral content?

[@TheInvisibleOrange26]

Different minerals have colors that appear different same as why soil on mars is red why lunar rock is white why earths is variety those colors are so faint for us to see plainly but here you saturate the color they really pop out same way red usually indicates iron

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

This is a great question. If the color was arbitrary, then the colors would be random for each picture across each session. But since these results can be duplicated over and over, you have to come to the conclusion that the colors are real, just highly exaggerated.

[@roamingcamera9362]

Mittens!

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

I found them buried in the dresser and yelled “YES” and scared my wife 🤣

[@manasdas6567]

decent tutorial. but your explanation is very poor. You didn't explain any of the function of the softwares that you used. I had to look for other tutorials to operate those softwares. And lastly, on camera raw, you hid the entire adjustment panel with the voice over video thumbnail, where the adjusctments you were doing were more important than your face. Please try to explain a bit better next time.

[@InsertAstroNameHere]

Feel free to do a better one. My mom said I’m handsome.