With the faintest ghostly hint of Earthshine visible, the extremely thin crescent Moon sets in the twilight.

The thin sliver of the crescent Moon extends only about 150 degrees around (instead of the expected 180 degrees, a full half circle) because of the young age of the moon, which was just 27.5 hours old when the image was taken.

This image was shot when the moon was about 6.5 degrees above the horizon and 14.4 degrees from the Sun. The Moon was visible because of the high angle of the ecliptic at this time of year and the clear transparent sky.

The top photo was exposed longer and is a fairly accurate representation of what the scene looked like visually.

To capture detail on the Sun-lit portion of the crescent in the bottom photo, a shorter exposure was used, making the sky darker.

• Lens: Astro-Physics 130 EDT F/8 Triplet Apochromatic Refractor
• F/stop: 8
• Exposure: 1/2 second
• Mount: Polar-aligned tracking equatorial mount, unguided
• Camera: Canon 1D Mark II DSLR
• Mode: Raw and Large JPEG shot concurrently
• ISO: 100
• White Balance: Daylight
• In-Camera Noise Reduction: Off
• Filter: None
• Temp: NR
• Time 8:07 p.m. EDT
• Date April 9, 2005
• Location: Batsto, NJ
• Calibration: None
• Processing: GradientXTerminator, Photoshop CS1 levels color balance

• Lens: Astro-Physics 130 EDT F/8 Triplet Apochromatic Refractor
• F/stop: 8
• Exposure: 1/8 second
• Mount: Polar-aligned tracking equatorial mount, unguided
• Camera: Canon 1D Mark II DSLR
• Mode: Raw and Large JPEG shot concurrently
• ISO: 100
• White Balance: Daylight
• In-Camera Noise Reduction: Off
• Filter: None
• Temp: NR
• Time 8:03 p.m. EDT
• Date April 9, 2005
• Location: Batsto, NJ
• Calibration: None
• Processing: GradientXTerminator, Photoshop CS1 levels color balance