Stereo Moon Photos, anyone keen to try?

Hey Fellow POTNs,

I jumped on the stereoscopic band wagon a few years ago and have been tinkering with things for a while with my own rig(s) however wondered about taking pictures of the moon.

To get a nicely rounded image, I believe I need an Interocular (distance between two cameras) of about 12,800km (approx 8000 miles). I don't have the money to make a rig that big, nor to take a photo then immediately beam around the planet as far as I can while still "dark" to setup and take the "other eye". The other option I've read is to take a photo, then wait a few months and weather pending, take a second image ... though I'm too inpatient for that.

So wondering if anyone else would be interested in joining me on this crazy half-baked idea/project/experimen​t? Looking for people around the planet, in the fathest distance from Sydney, Australia ... thinking inline longitudinally either 25 degrees E (South Africa) or around 50 degrees W (South America), if my "half-baked" math is right?

Ideally someone who has a canon crop sensor and a 480mm refractor as I'm shooting with a Canon 50D and Orion ED80T CF (or maybe 1920mm effective focal length, as I have a 4x TeleVue) ... though keen to try other gear.

Anyone interested???

That is one hell of a project..I wish you luck and look forward to seeing the results.

Why do you have to take both images at exactly the same point in time? The moon doesn't exactly change all that much, so as long as you calculate your orbits properly you should be able to generate usable images that have the same 'distance' and angle without leaving your hometown.

I'd participate, I have the gear but I'm at 34 degrees latitude

Luckless wrote in post #17710214
Why do you have to take both images at exactly the same point in time? The moon doesn't exactly change all that much, so as long as you calculate your orbits properly you should be able to generate usable images that have the same 'distance' and angle without leaving your hometown.

You can always rotate the moon around if the angle is wrong.

We just need somebody from the east coast to take a clear night photo and somebody over in Japan to take a shot as well on the same night. Then we can adjust angle accordingly and try to put that together.

Haha, thanks for the luck AbPho, we'll need twice as much anti-cloud luck which is a big ask in itself.

Luckless, your suggestion is valid though the point for me is to try a co-ordinated global photo shoot.

Calypsob, thanks for your interest ... from my vague calculations you might just be too far around for us to both get night time shots, but if you're keen to try that'd be great. I'll send you a private message shortly to organise details, if that works for you?

I concur with TeamSpeed, orientation should be easily fixable, though imagine we'd have to agree on an orientation to maximise as much background as possible, be cool to get the starry background in shot too if we can.

- Daniel

Quick update: Calypsob and I have completed stage 1 ... which is shooting the moon at the same local time (approx 16 hours apart) for convenience and as a test. Initial results are promising. Next step is to try for a synchronised shoot (+/- a few minutes).

Between our two locations, we have about 90min window of overlap of when the moon sets for him and is rising for me. This seems to give good depth. I'd also be keen to get others on board, who are a bit closer, say 6000km from Sydney, Australia, but that will be stage 3 i think.

- Daniel