MoonJet

This photograph is not a composite of two separate images. The jet really did fly in front of the moon while I was walking late in the afternoon of March 20, 2013. I had been photographing a Red-shouldered Hawk in her nest and was walking to a different location when I saw the jet approaching the moon. Right after I aimed my camera at the moon, the jet entered the field of view and I took a sequence of shots, one of which is shown here. However, the image did require post-processing to produce the MoonJet print. My goal for post-processing was to remove the blue tint of the late afternoon sky but still leave some blue in the contrails so they would contrast with the slightly yellow moon. This was accomplished by increasing the black points of the Red, Green, and Blue channels to (18,32,70), respectively, followed by some overall brightening (+30) of the image. The entire unprocessed sequence can be seen here