Ghostly early afternoon moon 25_02_18

[Knighty2112]

As an early test today for testing various settings on my Canon Powershot SX410 IS bridge camera for preparation for hopefully some widefield lunar shots tonight with it, I took about 12 shots of the moon with the same settings so I could stack them in Registax and see how/if they come out. The images below are first off the widefield shot with the moon, houses, bushes etc in view, with the moon stacked nicely, and the rest appearing as a blur, and the lower image showing the moon cropped out and ran through PS to improve it. I left the ghostly image of the seagull flying in the shot for a little composition, and note that you can also make out the following seas on the moon too; Mare Imbrium, Serenitatis, Tranquiliitatis, Crisium, Fecunditatis etc. Manual zoom was set to around 20, so surprised that the small Canon picked out this detail at all at this level of zoom. Nothing earth shattering I know, but it hopefully bodes well for some shots with it tonight when it is dark, were I'll try the Canon at full maximum zoom of 40 and see what I get back.

Widefield stacked image below;

Cropped & processed image below;

[Knighty2112]

Sadly, at nighttime there is not enough control of the Canon bridge camera’s aperture to stop the moon from been too bright. I’ll have to save up the pennies and get a dslr instead for nighttime widefield views with the moon in shot. 

[Stu]

9 minutes ago, Knighty2112 said:

Sadly, at nighttime there is not enough control of the Canon bridge camera’s aperture to stop the moon from been too bright. I’ll have to save up the pennies and get a dslr instead for nighttime widefield views with the moon in shot. 

Would some level of neutral density filter allow you control the brightness until you get your DSLR?

[Knighty2112]

1 hour ago, Stu said:

Would some level of neutral density filter allow you control the brightness until you get your DSLR?

Don’t think there is anyway to mount a filter on the camera Stu. No big deal really at the moment. I have my ZWO to keep me going with moon shots for now (and planets too). I do want to get a dslr though as I have seen some excellent shots of night scenes by various people on here, so want to dabble in that at some point, so need to get saving up for a good Canon camera. 

[Knighty2112]

Just tried a 2” Orion moon filter I have in front of the lens on the Canon bridge camera and tried a few shots through some gaps in the cloud just by hand. Seems to work OK I cutting the glare down, so I need to test it out more on a better night when I can mount it on my tripod and try a few more tries at the moon with the camera. If it works out OK for now all the better. Either way I’ll still be saving up still for a dslr later in the year.