GIMP

Somewhere, there are photographs I took with a beautiful, somewhat beat-up by time and a few decades of abandonment telescope of the moon. I assure you that my photographs are not as beautiful as the one I use here now, It is the image that greets you on that site's first page and that I found on what seems to be a credible moon image site even though they feature photographs from the photographer who took this one (screen shot provided in case it changes. The Mellish telescope, which I used to respectfully and affectionately call "my ten incher" or sometimes "my twelve footer" and the club which salvaged it and then maintained it until the fire had for this 'scope a Pentax K mount or a simply horrible one size fits all T-mount which always produced out of focus images because it changed the focal length.

In that same stack of photographs are pictures I took of the new observatory dome on the grass in front of the rebuilt building before they installed it and also a goregeous image of the old 'scope itself taken by my photographer friend whose name is David Smith (try googling for that if you are sad and missing real people and real experiences sometime...).

One time, there was scheduled a day viewing of the moon and venus. The people who salvaged and maintained that old 'scope were so good with the skies that often they didn't even need the finder-scope to find the planets (or they were just really good with magic and had little burrs in the mechanism or something). I had my camera and was very excited because I wanted to get a photograph of the moon with the blue sky features that the eye sees when it sees the moon during the day. It was too my great sorrow that I learned and saw for myself that what your unaided eye sees and what the telescope sees are not the same thing. I think that I might even had acquired the film which processed more blue to encourage the effect on the photograph. It is not possible to take an actual photograph of the moon like the one I am making here.

I am demonstrating how they made this image with a web page image instead of the actual image because I am so bored with licenses and that photograph deserves a copyright and someone to research if it can be used here like this or not; I was unlicensed and driving a car with a fake license sticker for years -- it made me a better driver, actually. Even playing cops and civil traffic offender gets to be nothing but stupid. I haven't read the MPL; probably it does not protect me from problems using this an image that is their browser displaying this page that displays this image -- who the hell cares?

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Pick a color for your moon and sky. I picked a color that was in the Change Foreground Color dialog memory here. I have no idea what I was using that for but it sure makes a pretty fake moon photo out of a goregeous probably real photo. Mr. Lawrence used #779bb3 for his. I also made one for the Californian moon because in California, the high schools teach graduate level thermodynamics to children who don't really understand that when things that are stuck on a wall fall that they fall down and the moon is made of green cheese.

The default for GIMP's blend tool is the Foreground to Background gradient. Make certain it is set on that gradient if you want the same results that me and the epod image maker achieved.

One could argue that GIMP's Burning Transparency gradient is also safer to use than the rags in the paint cans which started the fire in the Big O that night.

Colors/Map/Gradient Map is one click magic to make your virtual blue moon.

Here is a screenshot of how the colors look in the toolbox on the desktop right before I clicked the mouse.

Since my virtual blue moon is not going online until the day after, I should probably better call this tutorial "I remember how much the T-mount sucked".

GIMP

Make A Fake Blue Moon

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