took some pictures

2 days ago I was driving home around 9 pm and I noticed the moon, it looked brighter than usual so I parked my car, went out and took some pictures of the moon just for fun, it was a clear sky and I took the pictures in different positions and I was standing still ..I even set my camera to night vision and on another picture I made it inverse.

Could anybody explain why the pictures came out like that?

well here take a look:

[edit on 12/23/06 by dOmeshoT]

Nice pictures.

Why on some of them does the moon look out-of shape?

And no stars?

[edit on 4-1-2007 by Spacedeck]

Nice pictures, it just goes to show how easy an ordinary thing can be made to look like a UFO.

there was stars, but they werent close to the moon. or maybe my camera just didnt pick them up?

It is out of shape because no matter how carefully you hold the camera, you'll still move it a little bit. When the aperture opens, you move it a wee bit and it looks out of shape when viewed closely.

If you mount the camera on a tripod on a wind-less night, you'd more than likely get a "round" moon instead of a blob.

The moon is a pretty bright object, and the pics you took look normal for most cameras. YOu can take better pics of the moon, but you have to manually be able to set the exposure to see any sort of detail.

2nd poster, it looks out of shape do to movement of the camera when the picture was taken.

As for no stars, because it's hard to take pics of stars when taking a picture of the moon due to the relative brightness of the moon compared to the stars. It would not be easy with an automatic camera to take pictures of stars even if the moon wasn't there..you would have to be able to set your exposure to a longer period of time.

dOmeshoT, with "came out like that" i assume you are refering to the anamorphic_ish streaking from the lightsource? Could be a number of things, optical anomaly in the lens construction, poor optical construction or damaged lens element(s) is most likely the cause. Strong lightsources like an overexposed moon can cause lots of weired lighbleed also, depends a bit on the cameraconstruction/quality.

I was still like a sniper when I took those pictures, but that probaly explains why it came out like that. I was curious since It never happen to me before.

I never knew what kind of light the moon gave out and how the glow around it was but on the white picture the way it is like the glow around it and then the 2 spikes going upwards and alwso 1 at the bottom. How does it get spikes like that when it's round?

Originally posted by Spacedeck
I never knew what kind of light the moon gave out and how the glow around it was but on the white picture the way it is like the glow around it and then the 2 spikes going upwards and alwso 1 at the bottom. How does it get spikes like that when it's round?

It´s either cause by the lens or the atmosphere or a combination. Artifacts like this is quite common when bright sources of the light shine directly into the lens and it´s not directly related to the shape of the lightsource.