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I've got a bit of an obsession with photographing things flying in

front of other things. Maybe because it's a little more challenging

than photographing things that aren't. As always, I look forward to

reading your opinions, thoughts, and critiques. Good or bad, I

appreciate them all. You can click to see actual size. That was a

joke, the Moon is very big and would never fit on your screen.

Good shot!

I can even see the vapor trail coming out of the plane's wing! I also photographed the supermoon. (I am learning).

Thank you Michael and Janice.  Here is a composite of the full sequence. I wasn't sure which to use as they each have their merits but finally settled on the one displayed above because of the visible jetwash that distorts the western limb of the Moon more dramatically than the others.

http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r34/F1Addict/Moon/Sequence_PN_zps41066674.jpg

Learning to do this is an exercise in patience and perseverance but includes a certain amount of luck.  I would normally have shot this at ISO 100 but the higher ISO (200, in this case) allowed me to increase my shutter speed from 1/250 to 1/500.  The faster shutter speed prevented motion blur of the fast-moving jet.  The five photos represent a total of about one second.

Superb effort and image..  An easy 7...  Mike

I find the concept of photographing the Moon while a plane fly's through the view mind-blowing. Does this occur often, it can't just be down to luck or chance. I clearly need to try harder.

Best Regards. 

Some of it is certainly luck but chance favors the prepared. A couple years ago I discovered that there was a high altitude east/west air corridor just to the south of where I live. From my perspective, this corridor appears about 40º above the horizon which means that any time the Moon rises to that altitude, there is small chance that, at some point, a plane will fly in front of it. In theory, but in reality the phenomenon is rare. The planes (around one every ten minutes) usually miss the Moon, some by a little and some by a lot so capturing an image like this requires patience and, occasionally, several nights of observation.

The statistics support how unlikely it would be to witness such an event. According to Harvard, in collaboration with SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS), there are approximately 40,000 square degrees in the celestial hemisphere (the visible sky above and around you). The full moon occupies 0.5 degrees² of that hemisphere or about 1/80,000th. So, the chances of seeing a plane fly through that tiny 0.5º area is one in 80,000 divided by the number of planes in the sky during the period of observation. Remember when I wrote about the luck part?

Hi Jeff, thanks for the explanation, my admiration has risen even higher.

Best regards Ger.