Roy Foreman

Thanks very much for that info Mike - I will give it a try !

These were shot just after sunset when it was still quite light - around 8.15pm - pretty much broad daylight. I used a red filter to darken the blue sky, increase contrast, and combat the ever present atmospheric turbulence. 16" F/4.5 Reflector ZWO ASI 183 MM Baader Red Filter 15% of 900 frames at 19 fps Processed in Autostakkert and Photoshop Full frame and selective enlargements Hope you enjoy looking at them.

Yes Craig, that Baader FFC (Fluorite Flatfield Converter) is an impressive bit of kit ! Not sure if you are familiar with it but Baader claim it to be the sharpest barlow you will ever use. Two of its four elements are made from real calcium fluoride so thermal shock can be an issue. Its range of magnification is from 3x to 8x and it produces a flat field 90mm in diameter. It doubles as a field flattener when used with refractors and SCT's, and as a coma corrector with a reflector, and I have used it with a full frame sensor with no issues. It blows televue powermates out of the water ! All this comes at a price though. Take it from the cold night air into a warm house and it will damage beyond repair. It comes in an insulated box to protect it. And at current prices I expect it will cost around the £1000 mark. Not an item for the faint hearted !

Has anyone noticed the clenched fist near the top of image number four ?

Thank you Neil !

Thank you Craig and yes I am using the full sensor area, and I have to say it can be a real pain ! This is a 20 megapixel camera with tiny 2.5 micron pixels. The frame rate is a pedestrian 19 fps at best, but the real problem is that there is so much data produced that a conventional spinning disc hard drive just can't cope. I had to buy an external solid state drive, and even then I still get plenty of dropped frames. An evening's imaging can easily produce half a terabyte of data, which takes 12 hours to process, even with a modern high end laptop. Autostakkert takes 40 minutes to stack each file. The upside is that the resulting images are pretty decent, limited only by the muppet at the helm ! glad you like the images

Hi Neil - I found that the 19th was a lot steadier than the 20th. Haven't processed the data sufficiently yet to tell from my results. but I am in a different part of the country to you so that might make a big difference. On both nights I was shooting in twilight, which is normal for me as I find the air is steadier at this time where I live. I was using a red filter which really helps in the battle against turbulence, so I would have thought that your IR filter would have done an even better job - as you were expecting also. I can't explain this, other than to say that maybe the red / IR filters reduce micro turbulence at the fine detail level, but not the 'macro' turbulence where the whole moon appears to ripple and shift about. Your exposure times might possibly play a part in this also. In spite of all this you do seem to have recorded some fine detail, which is what caught my eye. Good luck and hope you manage to resolve this Roy

Very nice detail and quality. Well done. I have yet to process my images from the 19th and 20th !!

You will get there eventually. There is no magic involved. Mostly we are at the mercy of the atmospheric seeing. It is mostly a case of being very careful with focussing, and waiting for those moments when turbulence eases before starting the imaging run. You have done well with your 450D - nice to see a sequence of the waxing moon. Keep at it and thank you for your comments.

Well that is praise indeed ! Thank you so much and glad you like the images.

Thank you Mike, yes I do intend to join the images together eventually but with 6 consecutive clear nights I have so many images to process I'm getting a bit behind ! I usually use photoshop but I will give Microsoft ICE a try - anything to make life easier. Thanks for the tip and glad you like the images. Two more nights worth on their way !

It has taken me several days to process these. Hope the effort makes them worth looking at ! 16" F/4.5 Reflector ZWO ASI 183 MM 15% of 900 frames at 19 fps Processed in Autostakkert and Photoshop Close ups taken using Baader FFC at 3x mag. Now to start work on last night's data !

Very nice image - I love the little, or rather distant, galaxy at the north western edge.

I was out catching similar shots last night but have yet to process them. I tend to shoot in twilight as I find that this is when the seeing is at its best. Once it gets really dark and the earth starts cooling down, turbulence seems to rear its ugly head. I guess things get more stable as the night goes on. All this, of course, is down to my personal experience and location. Others may have differing views. Nice shots by the way

Two days on from my last lunar imaging session and another set of images - took 12 hours to process all the data ! 16" F/4.5 Reflector ZWO ASI 183 MM UV-IR Cut Filter 15% of 900 frames at 19 fps Processed in Autostakkert and Photoshop Full frame images and selective enlargements Hope you enjoy looking at them and as always C and C's always welcome !

Thank you. I have to admit that these had to be shot well before dark and just before the moon sank behind a hedge !

Thank you. I don't consider myself to be an expert at Luna imaging, so it is encouraging to get positive feedback !

Well done to capture such a thin crescent !

Here are a few more hot off the press ! All taken with the 16"

Thank you ! The seeing was not great so I am really pleased to have captured this much detail.

A couple of grab shots from the evening of the 15th. By the time the clouds departed the moon was quite low in the sky and the seeing was rubbish, so a bit of a rush to get set up and imaging in time. Not sure the optics were properly cooled to ambient. First image was with a Skywatcher Equinox 120 ED showing the whole crescent, the second with a 16" Reflector and is a selective enlargement showing Mare Crisium. Both using AZO 183 MM - 15% of 900 frames at 19 fps. Imaging the thin waxing moon is always a challenge - wait till dark and it's too low in the sky, image in twilight and contrast suffers. Tried capturing the earthshine but failed miserably. Maybe better luck next month !

Very well done ! All this IFN lurking around up there probably explains why I sometimes struggle to get clean dark backgrounds on some of my images !!