Waxing Gibbous (80%) 28 July 2012

[Episkey]

I've been busy the past couple weeks so I haven't really had any time to bring the 'scope out. I decided to get some Lunar shots tonight because there were some clouds. I took a quick look at Saturn too. Picture was single shot, 1/800 sec., ISO 200. Processed in Photoshop.

[nightfisher]

Lovely image, well done

[Fay]

why cant I see it, Joe?

Fay

[TheThing]

Nice!

TheThing

[Episkey]

Thanks!

@Fay, here's a direct link, maybe this will work?

http://i1222.photobucket.com/albums/dd482/joeys-astro-gallery/Telescope%20Lunar%202012/final728.png

[Takahashi]

Lunar single-shots can be sooo hit-n-miss... and you've hit this one. I (personally would've underexposed it a tad, but the main thing you've managed here is good focus without stacking.

Excellent result Joe.

[TheThing]

Di you think under exposing would have helped? I reckon it's pretty darn good as is!

TheThing

[Takahashi]

I don't know about "helped", but this is always a war of attrition in gibbous phases... in order to preserve or unveil detail near the limb, there's always a trade-off with detail near the terminator. In your image, the area around Theophilus, Petavius and Mare Nectarus is over-exposed, but if you were to balance the exposure you'd end-up losing detail along most of the terminator. It's in situations like this that I'd spend an hour or two wringing the best out of PS or Lightroom, to try and find a compromise between the two, without losing too much either way.

[Episkey]

Thanks everyone. I do see some parts of the image that are over-exposed, I admit I probably overdid the levels in PS. When I process it in Photoshop, I mainly focus on getting the best detail I can along the terminator, so like you said, some parts of the limb are overexposed.

[Episkey]

Here's tonights picture, a little less overexposed. Same exposure time as the first one.

[TheThing]

I think the Maria in the second one look a bit dark. Nice shot though.

A difficult trade off!

TheThing

[Episkey]

Yep, I added a lot of contrast in PS.

[Takahashi]

The user BrianB from this forum gave me an invaluable tip a couple of years ago, when I thought I was doing everything right with my Moon shots, but he pointed out to me that I was "washing out" certain areas, where it was impossible to even recover any detail due to the white register hitting a value of 255, where it kinda "locks", and can't be recovered. He suggested I concentrate on whatever part or feature of the Moon that's brightest at the time (this varies, obviously, with phase), and set exposure, gain or whatever according to that. It certainly works, as shadow detail is more accomodating when it comes to recovering some detail.