Is this a genuine photo of the supermoon over Gdańsk?

Question

Photo from this page: http://www.rmf.fm/magazyn/news,6902,wiekszosc-polakow-podziwialo-wczoraj-ksiezyc-zobaczcie-piekne-zdjecia.html

It's on a reputable site which claims that it is a genuine photo but I can't believe that the moon really appeared so large.

It may just be taken with a long focus zoom lens. Can you get the metadata from the photograph? This sometimes contains the information about the lens settings. — matt_black, Nov 16 '16 at 10:18
If the photo existed before this week then it can't be a photo of the supermoon. — cja, Nov 16 '16 at 12:59
@matt_black I guess you mean a long focal length (neither focus nor zoom capabilites have any relevance here), but no, you can easily see on the perspective of the row of houses along the harbour that the image (or at least that part of the image) is not taken with a long focal length. — Tor-Einar Jarnbjo, Nov 16 '16 at 13:28
[This site](https://500px.com/photo/123462349/red-moon-on-the-waterfront-motlawa-in-gdansk-by-fotolajt-?ctx_page=3&from=user&user_id=8895305) puts focal length at 19mm on a full-frame camera. That is a relatively short focal length. [Note: Metadata can't be trusted.] — Oddthinking, Nov 16 '16 at 14:21
@Oddthinking 19mm sounds reasonable. I was about to suggest 20-24mm in my last comment, but being just a gut feeling, I left it out. On the image you are linking to, which is of much higher overall quality than the version used in the question, it is very easy to see that the transition between the rooftops and the moon has been intentionally blurred. Probably to hide artifacts from stichitching two different images. — Tor-Einar Jarnbjo, Nov 16 '16 at 15:20
@cja this isn't a full answer, but check out this photo: http://cdn.digital-photo-secrets.com/images/moon-mmsizes.jpg you can see that for 1 and 2, the moon looks much larger, but the tree still looks normally sized. that's most likely what's going on here. someone is very far away using a high zoom lens to force perspective. — tuskiomi, Nov 16 '16 at 16:58
@tuskiomi: See the above comments, where we consider, and dismiss, such a hypothesis - it is inconsistent with the metadata and building appearance. But that's not considered evidence here. — Oddthinking, Nov 17 '16 at 01:37
@Oddthinking I'm not sure what you guys really proved except that the buildings *do* have an appearance. — tuskiomi, Nov 17 '16 at 20:41
@tuskiomi: Agreed. Our comments, based on our experience as photographers and meta data, are not sufficient evidence to form an answer here. However, the same applies to your comment. — Oddthinking, Nov 18 '16 at 01:13
@tuskiomi The difference is, that your comment is unsubstantiated. On the row of buildings, you can easily see that the buildings to the left, which are not much further away than the buildings to the right, appear much smaller. If the picture had been taken with a long focal length, the perspective compression would have applied to the entire frame (not only a single object as the moon) and the houses, which are to the left in the image and further away, would also have appeared larger. — Tor-Einar Jarnbjo, Nov 22 '16 at 22:39
There's a simple proof that it's fake: it shows the Moon rising in the north. — Mark, Nov 23 '16 at 23:07

klanomath · Answer 1 · 2016-11-16T20:32:32.730

As already stated by Frederico et. al. it's not the supermoon over Gdansk because the picture was already posted earlier.

It's neither genuine because the line of sight (feel free to enable the 3d vision) in the pic is almost NNE to SSW and the moon never stands that low over Gdańsk looking in this direction - at least in the "summer three quarter".

Additionally the relation between Moon size and the buildings (and star constellation) don't fit and Moon's surface structures should be much sharper.

Doing some easy math:

The Krantor (the strange overhanging building in the middle of the picture) has a height of ~31m (sorry, no english Wikipedia link found). The distance between the photographer (somewhere in the violet circle but almost at the same level as the opposite quay and ~2.5 m above sea level) and the Krantor is about 90 m (using Google):

Using this formula the angular diameter of the Krantor should be around 19°. The largest angular diameter of the Moon viewed from the Earth is about 34' which is about 1/33 of the Krantor. So a more realistic pic would look like this (I think the Moon is still a little oversized in my modded pic):

Federico · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-16T20:24:26.800

12

About this first element of your question

Is this a photo of the supermoon over Gdańsk?

We can easily answer with a clear NO, as the photo has been published before: http://trojmiasto.eska.pl/poznaj-miasto/trojmiasto-noca-a-gdyby-gdansk-wygladal-wlasnie-tak/50001 http://fotolajt.flog.pl/wpis/10794593/wieczorne-nabrzeze-motlawy-w-blasku-zacmienia-ksiezyca#w

from the automatic translation of the linked pages, it seems to be an image linked to a lunar eclipse ("blood moon"), and also the colors of the moon in the picture would indicate that.

Is this a genuine photo?

I don't speak Polish and google translate is not helping much, but the above pages does not seem to clarify this point in either way.

The blog related to the second link has reposted the photo on facebook in the last 24h, and many of the comments seem to agree that it is not genuine, but I cannot find any hard proof as of yet

edited Nov 16 '16 at 20:24

answered Nov 16 '16 at 13:18

Federico

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[Here is a higher-res photo on another photo-site](https://500px.com/photo/123462349/red-moon-on-the-waterfront-motlawa-in-gdansk-by-fotolajt-?ctx_page=3&from=user&user_id=8895305), but with the same author: fotoLajt. It claims the be the *Red* moon (caused by the [April 2015 lunar eclipse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_2015_lunar_eclipse), not a supermoon (i.e. full moon when the moon is at its closest point in its orbit). – Oddthinking Nov 16 '16 at 14:19
@Oddthinking feel free to add those informations in the answer (or write your own). or you meant that I should somehow correct the answer? – Federico Nov 16 '16 at 14:35
Oh, I didn't mean that your answer was incorrect. I very much doubt it is genuine, but I also have no hard proof. I just noticed that the moon looked like the red moon event, and correctly suspected it was people mixing the two events up. Maybe I should edit this in. – Oddthinking Nov 16 '16 at 14:41
Oh, I forgot to mention: [Another shot](https://500px.com/photo/123303803/red-moon-in-gdansk-dlugi-targ-street-at-american-style-by-fotolajt-), which should be easier to disprove, because it cannot be a super-long focal length taken from a long distance away. – Oddthinking Nov 16 '16 at 14:44
and the reason for the downvote is? – Federico Nov 16 '16 at 18:58

RedGrittyBrick · Answer 3 · 2016-11-24T21:24:31.560

Is this a genuine photo of the supermoon over Gdańsk?

No, the photographer claims it is a photo of an eclipse over Gdansk

It is almost certainly a composite image. The photographer's website has several photos of different places in Gdansk containing the same image of the moon.

Original

The link in the question shows the image credited to fotojajt

The photographer at www.fotolajt.pl calls themselves Pawel and is based in Gdansk, Poland. The photo is in a blog entry dated 30 January 2016 where it states "eclipse on 28 September 2015." (presumably when the photos were actually taken)

Composite

Another photo in the same website uses the same moon image, strongly suggesting it is a composite. In the time taken to travel around Gdansk the real moon would almost certainly have changed lighting during an eclipse in the time a solo photographer would have taken to pack away camera gear relocate and set up again.

Size

Another image showing the same building from further along the harbour includes a moon that appears to be somewhere around a tenth of the size. EXIF info says that this other image was captured by a Nikon D610 35mm full-frame DSLR using a 50mm focal-length lens.

The apparent size of the moon at syzergy-perihelion (supermoon) is only 14% larger than at aphelion, and the surrounding buildings at this location constrain the use of longer telephoto lenses to distort the scale from a viewpoint close to the water level.

here's a comparison with a more realistic photo at the same location. We can see the difference in size is more than 14%, even taking into account likely differences in focal length and viewpoint.

^{In the second photo the moon is just above and left of the streetlight}

Orientation and Colour

Other photos of the supermoon published in polish websites (example) in 2016 seem to show a more normal colouration and a very different (but consistent) orientation. Suggesting that the moon in the image in the question is not taken in Poland in mid November 2016.

Sea of Tranquility near 12 o'clock position. Normal colour.

The image of the moon is strikingly similar to an Alamy stock Photo taken in Westphalia Germany on September 28 2015.

It is also similar to one taken of a blood moon (total eclipse) by Karen Bleier in Virginia in 2010.

Sea of Tranquility at 4 o'clock position. Red tint.

This supports the conclusion that the moon in the photo was photographed during an eclipse, not during the November 2016 "supermoon" period.

Conclusion

It seems likely that the image of the moon seen in the presumed composite was taken during an eclipse in 2015.

It seems unlikely to have had the same colouration if photographed when there was no eclipse to cause the tint.

A better (already exisiting) pic is this (probably) Reuters [pic](http://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/128/590x/blood-moon2-470435.jpg) published in the [Express](http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/470435/Watch-live-coverage-of-the-first-total-lunar-eclipse-of-2014-The-Blood-Moon). Properly cut, rotated clockwise (~65°) & some gaussian softening and it fits. — klanomath, Nov 22 '16 at 18:16