Moon is the most fascinating and closest celestial neighbor of our home planet. It never fails to surprise us and to attract our attention every time it rises above the horizon. Sometimes it appears as a thin crescent, almost weightless and fragile, sometimes it shows itself as the queen of the night sky in it's full glory, outshining everything else by reflecting the light from the Sun. During various phases we aim our telescopes at the Moon and can see the rough features of the moonscape along terminator- the area within the border between illuminated and dark parts of the Moon's surface. This is where the rims of the craters and mountains cast their shadows onto the surface and can be seen as high and low features, well resolved even with small telescopes.

When Earth-facing surface of the Moon is completely illuminated, there aren't any shadows on it's surface and we can only see the the light , reflected differently due to the differences in mineral composition and reflectivity of the surface.

I tried to apply various digital effects to increase the features detail on one of my best full Moon images, but haven't achieved anything spectacular, until I've tried something different.

Recently I was preparing telescope images for the website and applied Emboss effect to a picture:

The experiment with the Moon didn't have to wait for too long and the processed image has shown much better, how rough the surface of the Moon is. This effect adds to the picture what looks like shadows in the regions between darker and lighter features. The next step was simply to place two images side by side and.. cross my eyes.

Enjoy the view!

Equipment used: TAL-100 refractor; Canon DSLR. Emboss effect by Photoshop.

If you are experiencing difficulty in viewing it first time, click on the stereoscopic image of the Sun below for instruction and to view the sun in 3D: