First Moon Close Up: Which craters are these?

[Rihard]

Hi,

this was my third night playing with the 200P. I randomly discovered that I could screw the Skywatcher 2X Barlow into my Nikon T-Ring and that I could fit it into another Barlow, the Tal 2X. So I've been able to catch some surface detail on the moon and I'm very pleased with them. The second picture is taken without barlow in between the camera and the scope.

What craters are these? What is the best reference to begin identifying them on my own?

Any comment is appreciated. Any suggestion on how to take sharper pictures? Focus was perfect on the viewfinder of my camera.

Cheers

[ejwwest]

Looks like Theophilus, Cyrillus and Catharina. I took this one of the same area last night: Lunar Craters | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

I use Jeremy Cook's Hatfield SCT Lunar Atlas.

[Rattler]

Yeah it is those craters. Nice images.

[Cornelius Varley]

Virtual Moon Atlas

Peter

[Rihard]

ejwwest: wonderful pic... what setup did you use to take that pic? It looks pretty sharp in comparison to mine

Thanks all for the info and comments, I'm downloading the Moon Atlas now

[ejwwest]

ejwwest: wonderful pic... what setup did you use to take that pic? It looks pretty sharp in comparison to mine

I have a Celestron EdgeHD 925 (but the advantages of the scope are more apparent on a much wider field than this). I have a Moonlite Crayford focuser which helps get a fine focus. The camera is an Imaging Source DFK21AU618 and I ran it at about 1/300s exposures at 60fps to get a couple of thousand shots. For some reason AS2 wouldn't process it (unlike this: Lunar Craters - Atlas, Hercules, Endymion | Flickr - Photo Sharing! ) so I stacked it in Registax 6 selecting the best 1000 shots for stacking. I then use level 1 and 2 wavelets upto about 60-70 and tweaked the noise and sharpness. Finally used Photoshop Elements 6 to adjust the colour and levels.

I need to document the settings so i can more easily replicate them: the three shots I put on Flickr from last night all have different colour and levels which would make it impossible to use in a mosaic.

[Mak One]

I need to document the settings so i can more easily replicate them: the three shots I put on Flickr from last night all have different colour and levels which would make it impossible to use in a mosaic.

Registax lets you "hold" the wavelets settings between images, or you can save all your process settings as a "scheme" for use on any image - one click "does all".

HTH

[ejwwest]

Registax lets you "hold" the wavelets settings between images, or you can save all your process settings as a "scheme" for use on any image - one click "does all".

HTH

Yes, I know. My problem is remembering to do it! But Registax is but part of the workflow. Adding in AS2 and PSE into the workflow, as well as keeping the capture settings constant (true for my session last night) is a big problem (for me at least!).

[Mak One]

EJW - Yes, sorry, didn't mean to teach any egg-sucking . The work flow can get you like that. Can you re-order the flow so you stitch the mosiac before you do the photoshop tweaks - that way you only do that step once, with the wavelet steps etc "automated" in Registax beforehand?

Have you tried MS ICE for the stitching? Fully automatic and pretty seamless - just crop the bright stacking artefacts around the frame edges before you load them in to the program for stitching. Other advantage is that when done, if you "export to file" it fills in the gaps around the frames in black so you get a neat image.