Mandy D

I recall seeing on the web, the following text quoted as verbatim as I can recall: "Where does the Moon go when it is not in our sky? Nobody knows!" Have you seen references to Nibiru near the Sun when they have lens flare in photographs? They think they have discovered a huge new planet that scientists are unaware of. "And don't tell me it's lens flare, because this is different!"

@John_D That was a single image. I had numerous problems that prevented a stack, last night, despite the lovely clear skies and high Moon. For some reason the D800 decided to switch itself to auto-ISO mode, which is a mode that I never select. It's done this a few times, now and I have no idea why or how. I ended up throwing half the images away due to over-exposure. On some it went up to ISO-1600, despite being set to ISO-100. Then, AS!3 failed to stack the images properly, something it seems to do more and more recently, so I took the best image as identified by PIPP and proceeded to process that in GIMP to get the best result I could. I'm hoping to have another go at the Moon, tonight. I hope you get clear skies, soon, but looking at your location, I guess you don't do too well with the weather.

I dragged the 200P out for the first time in weeks, tonight and grabbed a few shots of the Moon. Then I turned the telescope to Jupiter and grabbed a quick image of it in the twilight. I really didn't expect to capture any moons, but I got all four Gallilean ones- G, E, I, C from top to bottom.

I set up the 200P and Nikon D800, just after 6 p.m. but the Moon clouded over before I could get a single image, or even focus the telescope! I couldn't be bothered to bring it in, so I left until about 21:45, at which point the Moon was visible, desp[ite clouds moving across it, so I set the camera up again and started grabbing frames. At 22:06, I got a single frame that was almost worth processing, but having no idea I'd got it at the time, I carried on for another couple of minutes until the Moon was covered by impenetrable cloud and no prospect of clearing any time soon, so I packed up. I couldn't get anything to stack, so I processed the single frame in GIMP, converting to B&W, dropping out the blue channel entirely, applying sharpening, adjusting curves and almost have an acceptable image. Given the appalling conditions, I'm quite happy with my first Moon image in more than a month.

Right now, mine would be a Skywatcher 190MN.

@Cornelius Varley Oh, OK. I couldn't see that. Then, it must be so.

Not at 7 p.m. in the UK. I have 7:31 for my location in the middle of the UK, today. I think we need the OP's location, first.

@Xilman Ahh, good to see correct use of SI units for the critical dimensions of your telescopes. Keep up the good work.

I've not heard that term in years! I really must read the books, again.

My rings are threaded on both sides, so I plan to add a second dovetail, then clamp things to that with a Vixen clamp. Alternatively, get a piece of aluminium bar and drill to suit.

@PatrickO In addition to @vlaiv's comment on tracking, I would add that it can be advantageous to not track or to allow the Moon to drift through the FOV. If you have any dirt or defects on the sensor, these will automatically and magically disappear when you stack your images, since the stacking software will not see them as features to be stacked. I have a dark mark on the sensor of my camera and it never causes a problem if I am stacking.

Part of the southern hemisphere of the Moon near the terminator at 81% waxing phase. This is a stack of 18 images at 2.4 m focal length with the Nikon D800. Processing in AS!3 and GIMP.

Nice captures. I was having similar problems tonight with the clouds and lost the northern regions completely, but did OK in the south.

Daft question: but, have you checked that the locking screw on the sie of the focuser is not too tight?

Reprocessed version of Earthshine. Gaussian blur applied to mask the noise.