See a year of young moons in this photo composite

The 2024 lunar calendars are here! Best New Year’s gifts in the universe! Check ’em out here.

A year of young moons

Adeel Shafiq in Pakistan patiently created this photo composite showcasing young moons from every month of the year in 2023. Young moons are those that appear in the evenings just after new moon phase. You can spot them just after sunset, in the glow of twilight. These slender crescents, from hours old to a couple days old, show just a wafer-thin reflection of the sun’s light.

Adeel described his path to capture the 12 young moons of 2023:

I embarked on a journey at the start of the year (2023) to capture each young moon, which was a tough ask given the amount of dust pollution over the horizons and cloudy weather during monsoon season in summers from Lahore, Pakistan. I had been chasing the thinnest of crescents for almost more than two years. Each time I try to better my own record of capturing the least-illuminated moon. It’s one of those exercises that tests not only your knowledge about the horizon, twilight and the ecliptic but – most importantly – your patience. The youngest crescent moon I captured was 22 hours old and at 1% illumination.

How did Adeel do it?

Adeel shared the specifics of how he captured the 12 images of a young crescent moon and combined them into the beautiful composite image above. Adeel said:

I took all images during the twilight period shortly after sunset with my Samyang 135mm f/2.2 lens attached to a Canon 1300D camera. And I cropped all images with same resolution without any de-rotation or resizing. Each moon image is a single image with post-processing done in Photoshop. I also created this collage with the help of Photoshop 2023.

Well worth your year of effort. Thanks, Adeel!

Bottom line: A young moon is when a thin crescent appears in the evening sky just after new moon. Enjoy this beautiful composite image of the 12 young moons of 2023.