An evening with our Moon - 15th July 2016

[David Smith]

Cloudy all day yesterday but they shifted just after 19:30 leaving a beautiful summer evening sky. I initially went out around 21:00 but spent quite a bit of time just observing the Moon visually. My Revelation 32mm plossl shows me the full disk of the Moon against a blue sky and craters crisp and sharp across the disk. Moving through my eyepiece case the ES 82° 11mm still shows much of the disk but detail in those craters comes rushing in at me. The ES 82° 6.7mm brings the larger craters up close and personal, structure in the walls and floors becomes obvious even through moderate seeing. Eventually I decided it was time to plug the camera in and see what I could get.

This is a 6 pane panorama. I took 1000 frames for each pane and then stacked just 60 for each pane. The panes were then sharpened in ImPPG before being stitched in AutoStitch. A final tweak of levels was applied in GIMP before conversion to png for publishing.

These two are single panes using the Revelation 2.5x barlow (FL=2500mm), 2000 frame ser's as a breeze had picked up by this time. I did try stitching these two together as they looked like a good match (unintentional) but the I was not happy with the result.

Thanks for looking.

[xtreemchaos]

great shots Dave, lovely details mate, i got my best seeing on the 13th ,no luck since with the cloud, its dismal here today and im missing all the action on sol, hope the weather improves soon, i found myself watching big brother lastnight, ive rung the doctor and she says there nothing tha can do! . hope you have clear skys charl. 

[David Smith]

Thanks Charl. Lots of cloud here again today but the forecast shows some breaks later, fingers crossed. Hope you catch a break soon.

[Knighty2112]

Nice work David. Well done!

Was out viewing the Grimaldi/Mare Humorum area last night around 11pm too. Would have stayed out a little longer than I did, but was zonked out from work alas.  

[laudropb]

Very nice set David.

[Ruud]

I don't thank the Moon wail ever bore me. Wonderful shots, David. Thanks for sharing!

[Scooot]

Great shots David. I did the same as you the other night but in reverse. Started with the camera in the little Frac then spent an age viewing it before getting out the 10' for closer inspection. It's always fascinating how much detail is visible. I remember being struck by how smooth the mares were littered with the tiniest craters.