Bathed By The Light Of The Moon

I had read about this art installation visiting Gloucester Cathedral but found it difficult to visualise what the nave would look like filled with a 7 meter moon. The art work is by the UK artist Luke Jerram and is entitled "Museum of the Moon". The original moon was created in 2016 but has since been joined by other moons that now tour the world, allowing people to get a much closer look at that illuminated disc in the sky. The image of the moon is printed at 120dpi from NASA imagery and every 1cm equates to 5km on the surface of the moon.

For almost 3 weeks the moon hung in the nave and after looking at when would be best to visit I decided on their last evening session. The day had been overcast and luckily when we arrived it had stopped raining. We were soon entering the cathedral where I was presented with my first sight of the moon through a forest of stone columns. It was almost a surreal experience seeing something that you have got so used to seeing hanging in the night sky being there, right in front of you, and inside a cathedral. With it being internally illuminated it also presented a similar experience of a large white disc hanging against a dark backdrop. A benefit of seeing the moon at these close quarters was the ease of finding locations like the moon landings and after a bit of wandering around places like the Sea of Tranquillity and Taurus–Littrow soon came into sight.

Next came the fun bit, photographing this amazing sight. As you can imagine wanting to experience the moon for yourself was a popular thing to do. There were people everywhere, all standing in awe at what they were seeing and capturing their own views. After a bit of patience and waiting towards the end of the evening session the crowds started thinning. It still wasn't empty but empty enough that with a bit of over shooting people could be edited out to give a much quieter and serene view of this place.

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Gloucester Cathedral

Museum of the Moon

Luke Jerram

Strike a Light, Museum of the Moon

Europe / UK-England

Lat: 51° 52' 2.376" N
Long: 3° 15' 48.774" W

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: High. Pinpoints the exact spot.

Taken with a Nikon D300 and a Nikkor 10.5mm f/2.8G fisheye lens. Mounted on a Nodal Ninja 5 panorama head and R-D16 rotator atop a Manfrotto 055XPROB tripod. Shots taken at 6 positions 60° apart, tilted 15° down and another shot taken looking straight up. 28 shots captured covering 4 complete rotations. Raw files then processed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.7 before being stitched and blended together to remove people using PTGui 10.0.15 Pro and converted using Pano2VR 6.1 beta3b.