Moon video. Can you tell me what this is?

I put my video camera on a tripod and set it to the moon. It was April 13, right around 8 pm. I know it's a crappy video with an old camcorder. I'd really like to know what is in the video. I did some searching and saw that Regulus would be close to the moon on Apr. 13, but on April 15 it says Saturn and Spica would be near the moon. My video was shot Apr. 13 and I see two objects.
earthsky.org...
earthsky.org...

If you FF to 8:02ish to the end you can see what I'm talking about. Oh, and in order to upload it to my pc I had to break it up into 3 separate videos and then put them back together again. That's why you might see the times repeat.



I'm planning on getting a new video camera. Can anyone recommend a decent HD Cam for night sky viewing?

I would recommend getting a camcorder that has an infrared mode. night vision is... meh. with at least 150x optical zoom. sony has some good ones I bereeve

Are you talking about the things indicated by the arrows below?



If so, that's lens flare. It's caused by the reflection of the bright moon off the internal lens surfaces in the camera.

Did you film this through a window ?

It looks like it might be a lens flare.
I could be wrong but I have seen similar results from pointing my camcorder at a bright source.

No, I didn't film through a window and I saw the the objects with my binoculars also.

reply to post by virraszto


Interesting....I don't know much about this kind of thing, but I hope someone gives you some answers....I'll be watching!

Originally posted by virraszto
No, I didn't film through a window and I saw the the objects with my binoculars also.

So we are talking about the objects I pointed out?

Binoculars have lenses, too.

Originally posted by nataylor

Originally posted by virraszto
No, I didn't film through a window and I saw the the objects with my binoculars also.

So we are talking about the objects I pointed out?

Binoculars have lenses, too.

Yes, those are the two objects I'm talking about. I suppose it could be lens flare, but would I see the exact same lens
flare through a set of binoculars and a video camera? I saw the first object with the binos and that's why I put the video camera on. After I got the cam set up, I took a look again and saw two objects through the binos.

Yep, internal reflections.

Look at the end of the video, when the camera shudders. They move with it.

Originally posted by virraszto
Yes, those are the two objects I'm talking about. I suppose it could be lens flare, but would I see the exact same lens
flare through a set of binoculars and a video camera? I saw the first object with the binos and that's why I put the video camera on. After I got the cam set up, I took a look again and saw two objects through the binos.

Sure, depending on the design of your binoculars, you could see the same kind of lens flare.

Try this experiment: Record the moon again with your video camera. Put the moon in the upper left part of the frame, and record for a few seconds. Then put the moon in the lower left, and record. Then go on with the lower right and upper right. Since this is lens flare, it will always point in the opposite direction of where you have the moon. Hence, in your video, since the moon is in the upper right, the lens flare points down and towards the left.

You know, after looking at the video again and thinking about it, it probably is lens flare. I do wear glasses and sometimes it's hard to see through the viewfinders with glasses on. I'm going to get a new video camera with HD and start filming the skies and have much better picture quality. Then I'll come back and post something amazing that I found. Sorry if I wasted your time.