An astrophotographer has photographed the September Harvest Moon as part of a project to capture all of 2023’s supermoons.
The Harvest Moon of 29 September was the last supermoon of 2023, and Soumyadeep Mukherjee captured all four supermoons this year from his location in Kolkata, India, to produce this composite image.
Supermoons occur when the Moon is at the closest point to Earth in its orbit, which is known as ‘perigee’.
A perigee full Moon appears subtly brighter and larger than a regular full Moon, and has earned the name ‘supermoon’.
Astronomers don’t generally use the term, however, and the technical name for a supermoon is a perigee syzygy Moon.
Nevertheless, a supermoon is a great reason to get outside and look up at a bright full Moon, taking advantage of our closest celestial companion
The four supermoons in 2023 were 3 July (the Buck Moon), 1 August (Sturgeon Moon), 30 August (Super Blue Moon) and 29 September, the Harvest Moon.
Harvest Moon is the name given to the full Moon closest in date to the first day of autumn, the autumn equinox.
All of Soumyadeep’s images were captured from the same location with a Nikon D5600 DSLR camera and and Sigma 150-600c lens at the same focal length (600mm).
Each supermoon is a stack of 250 images.
Soumyadeep is an amateur photographer based in Kolkata, India and has been imaging the night sky since 2020.
You can see more of his work at linktr.ee/soumyadeepmukherjeephotos