Eli5 how people are able to take pictures of the moon and it looks freaking huge.
In: 1
Smart phones have apps and cameras.
Telescopes have mirrors that make for things look close.
Entrepreneurs have created a piece of plastic that attaches your phone to the Telescopes.
The apps help you get the pictures.
Ta da. Science!
You get a very long camera lens and photograph a person who is very far away.
The moon is essentially always just over 0.5 degrees of view. With an 800mm lens on a 35mm camera that’s just under 1/3rd of the frame. It’s possible to take a portrait of a person with an 800mm lens, you just need to be fairly far from the subject.
Zoom in.
Imagine taking a picture of a skyscraper next to the moon. If you’re near the skyscraper, it’ll obviously appear a lot larger than the moon. You can drive away and then zoom in with a camera to make the skyscraper look as if you’re still near to it.
If the moon is also in the image, it’ll appear to enlarge with the zoom on the camera, but it won’t appear to shrink as you drive away. It’ll only get bigger, and it’ll look unusually large if there’s an object to compare it to.
If you think of people taking photos of the leaning tower of Pisa, with a person posing like they’re holding it up? It’s a forced perspective of the person being close to the camera and the tower being far away. For a giant moon shot, focus on a person or object far away and zoom in. It’s the same forced perspective, just reversed