What happens if you capture the moon in HDR?

Why does it happen to us when we see the moon? Because our eyes cannot distinguish such bright and dark areas at the same time. The unlit part of the moon is hard to see, as it is much dimmer than the sun-lit arc. However, in the modern digital age, differences in brightness can be artificially reduced, for example by using an extended dynamic range function.

The presented image is composed of 15 short exposures of a bright sickle and 14 long displays of the unlit part of our satellite. Combining multiple images with different exposures allows you to make the brightness gradient smoother, increase detail and depth.

Just after and shortly before the new moon, we can still observe the pale unlit part of the moon together with a bright crescent moon. This phenomenon, called ash light or the glow of da Vinci, was explained by Leonardo da Vinci about 510 years ago: sunlight is reflected first from Earth to the Moon and then back from the Moon to Earth.