Northlander has supermoon in his hands

Chris Pegman has the supermoon in his hands. PHOTO/ Chris Pegman

Kerikeri photographer Chris Pegman didn't have the whole world in his hands but he had the next best thing - the supermoon.

And his photo might be considered the ultimate selfie.

The man with a passion for astro photography captured the amazing shot of himself in which it appears he is suspended in the night sky with the super moon sitting on the finger tips of his outstretched hands. He has called it: "Caught in the act ... again."

The supermoon occurs when the moon is within 90 per cent of its closest position to Earth. The supermoon has not occurred since 1948 and will happen again in 2034.

Yesterday morning, the centre of the moon was about 356,510km from the centre of Earth. That's equivalent to nine times the circumference of this planet.

Mr Pegman said he used an application on his phone to pinpoint where the supermoon would be in the sky above his home on Sunday and he used an ordinary ladder to boost him into the sky.

The camera was mounted on a tripod and set to take a shot every 10 seconds. But it was only through patience and rushing from the ladder to the camera to make slight adjustments he managed to get his shot. At one stage the camera toppled over.

"It took about an hour and would have been much easier with two people," he joked.
However, it was his wife's birthday and she had gone off to have dinner with friends, insisting he stay and get the photo. After he captured the shot he joined them.

It is not the first time Mr Pegman has taken an impressive lunar photo.

Last November he combined two photos - one of the moon and the other of the radio telescope at Warkworth - using the computer program Photoshop.

He combined the two so the moon was resting perfectly in the radio dish and uploaded the result to his Flickr page and an online photo competition called 500px. A few hours later a friend called to say his photo had gone viral.

It also collected him a gold medal at this year's photography awards.