Moon Shot

Thanks for the extra clarification Iggy, YES, a clear sky is needed to use the rule. If the sky is not clear more exposure will be needed just as it is needed on a cloudy day when using the sunny 16 rule.

Thank you every one for the comments.
As Said, A clear sky was a big factor

Fred..

Hey FredS,
I like your shot here very much except for the noise no the dark sky.

I tried to play with it (hope you don't mind) to subdue the effect of the noise in the dark area.
Just to let you know what I did,
I took one shot with my lens cap closed just to get a dark image with no noise.
Then I merged your moon photo with dark image
I changed the blend mode of the dark image to soft light then adjusted the opacity to 89% in these case.
Flaten it and voila!
I don't know if you like it and I am sure there might be other ways too.
Cheers,
Yisehaq

I like your play here Yisehaq and prefer the contrast.

I like the second one better. As Marko said I prefer the extra contrast.

Nice job on the edit Yisehaq

The orgional one is better than the one I posted. It is almost Noise free.
Reducing to under 200 kb really kills the IQ

He is the same picture with a little more contrast.
I tried to reduce the noise but image quality decreased.
The IQ in this was was lost. My Photo editing needs some work.

Fred..