This is maybe the biggest optical illusion everybody has seen. The Moon is huge on the horizon, and a couple of hours later it shrinks to its 'normal' size. Of many hypotheses proposed, the one defined as 'apparent distance hypothesis' is the most accurate explanation - it's simply because we humans perceive the sky as flatter or more gently curved than it is in reality.
But you cannot fool the camera because of the simple fact that it does not have a brain, and therefore if you fix it on the tripod and take the image near the horizon and another one a couple of hours later, the Moon should be the same size. I always wanted to test this myself, and finally my new Coolpix came with a feature of self-taking images, and I did it last night.
So, in a nutshell, after a couple of hours of shooting, I took about 500 images (triggered every half a minute), and this is the result: maybe not so clear and perfect images, still, this is not a professional camera with good telephoto lenses, but the real size of the Moon is unchanged in all photos.
The HDR image (combined with a 5-minute difference between two images) above is created by the open-source application Picturenaut - since all images but the first three ended in full darkness, I used the first one and HDR-it with just moons from others. The result is this combined image.
Finally, here is also the video created of all images by using the freeware application (ImagesToVideo) in 720p resolution. So, if you see a giant moon rising up or a giant red sun setting down, remember it is just an illusion. Actually the reality is that both celestial bodies are actually closer when they are directly above us they are next to the horizon.
Refs:
But you cannot fool the camera because of the simple fact that it does not have a brain, and therefore if you fix it on the tripod and take the image near the horizon and another one a couple of hours later, the Moon should be the same size. I always wanted to test this myself, and finally my new Coolpix came with a feature of self-taking images, and I did it last night.
Moonrise, HDR image created by Picturenaut
So, in a nutshell, after a couple of hours of shooting, I took about 500 images (triggered every half a minute), and this is the result: maybe not so clear and perfect images, still, this is not a professional camera with good telephoto lenses, but the real size of the Moon is unchanged in all photos.
The HDR image (combined with a 5-minute difference between two images) above is created by the open-source application Picturenaut - since all images but the first three ended in full darkness, I used the first one and HDR-it with just moons from others. The result is this combined image.
Finally, here is also the video created of all images by using the freeware application (ImagesToVideo) in 720p resolution. So, if you see a giant moon rising up or a giant red sun setting down, remember it is just an illusion. Actually the reality is that both celestial bodies are actually closer when they are directly above us they are next to the horizon.
Refs: