New Moon in May 2026 with a 1m-TV-dish
Here is an image of the New Moon near the Sun from 5/16/2026 around noon. Recorded with a 1 m dish at 21 GHz using our new software for automatic sky scanning.
Attached are both the raw image and a version with bicubic interpolation applied to smooth the pixelation. The displayed dynamic range was limited to 0.45 dB to make the Moon visible. Since the Sun is much brighter in radio wavelengths than the Moon, its disk appears significantly larger. This effect is caused entirely by the difference in radio brightness and the selected color scale dynamic range.
Setup: -1-m-TV-dish on AVX mount (Celestron) -Ka-Band-LNB Norsat 9000 -Second receiver broadband detector -Python based program for sky scanning
Around local noon, the Moon approached the Sun to roughly 5 degrees separation. The scan took about 30 minutes. The sky background is noticeably uneven. This was caused by unstable weather conditions over Berlin during the observation: clouds, rain, wind, and only occasional clear gaps in the sky.