The Moon 06-10-17, at one, a challenge.

[johnfosteruk]

Last night I finally became one with Mak (an imaginative name don't you think). I've already had the benefit of fantastic observations with her but imaging was still a work in progress as per my recent lunar images.

Harvest moon was good but obviously there's no real detail to put her to the test. Last night was a nice phase (a favourite actually, my first views of Luna through a telescope were of the Eastern limb, Crisium, Cleomedes, Langrenus and Petavius hold a special place in my heart) Luna was at a decent altitude and the seeing was rock solid in a mainly cloud free sky for an hour or two.

I've learned that I have a paradox on my hands. Mak's form factor very much lends itself to being a grab and go scope, cooling isn't an issue as they're stored in a cool place. They still need cooling but Mak has been performing well visually after only half an hour or so. The paradox where imaging is concerned is that although she's grab and go which is ideal for those quick gaps in the clouds, I'm not going to get the best out of her without the benefit of clear skies for a good long session.

With the frac and the D3200 I can put together a good image with 50 frames. 

Mak needs much more. I captured 1000 still frames, stacked 350 (the seeing was very good) and she's a little beauty, but I'm obviously not going to be able to do that through those quick gaps in the clouds when the seeing is poor. 

So Big Blue for the gaps, Mak for the good nights and visual until I get a proper mount and planetary/lunar camera with decent frame rates.

On to the images. As I said, 350 of 1000 frames at 1/640s ISO 100. Pipp>AS!2>IMPPG>Photoshop. I'm sure I can get a little more sharpness/less noise out of this one so I've attached the tif file (26mb) out of AS!2 in case anyone fancies a little processing challenge. DSC_4_g3_ap5903.tif

Mono

Invert

100% Crops

 

Some fun with LTVT

Annotated Disk

Annotated crops

Aerial views

[Astro Imp]

Like these a lot, you're right this phase shows us some great features, I always find myself drawn to Petavius, just so much to take in.

[johnfosteruk]

3 hours ago, Astro Imp said:

Like these a lot, 

Thanks Alan.

I've been playing a little more with LTVT. Take my image as texture, LRO DEM data for elevation data, put them together and pretend you have a bigger scope.

Cleomedes region

Crisium end result

Langrenus end result

Petavius end result

[Astro Imp]

2 hours ago, johnfosteruk said:

Thanks Alan.

I've been playing a little more with LTVT. Take my image as texture, LRO DEM data for elevation data, put them together and pretend you have a bigger scope.

Cleomedes region

Crisium end result

Langrenus end result

Petavius end result

Very impressive.