Lunar close-ups Feb 15th 2019

[Carl M]

With such a bright moon and with it being so close to Rosette nebula I decided to give my much neglected C9.25 a run out. Had trouble trying to get sharp images with it in the past which must have been a cooling problem. Left it outside for a good 2 hours or more before checking collimation and focusing and it seems to have held up quite well. In the past I would leave it outside for a while, do a star test and I would see a heat plume.

All images are the best 20% of 2000 frames; captured in Sharpcap, stacked in AS!2, wavelets in Registax and slight sharpening in PS. Captured with ASI120MC and the standard 2x barlow that you get bundled in with Skywatcher telescopes - which I hope to replace sometime soon.

Gassendi

Copernicus

Moretus

Rupes Recta

Moretus and Clavius area (no barlow)

and as a bonus, thought I'd attempt my first mosaic. Didn't expect it to come out well doing it manually but I got something at least. Next time I will use something like EQMosaic and do the whole moon, hopefully it stitches together a bit better. This was 9 frames stitched together in Microsoft ICE.

Thanks for looking

Carl

[David Smith]

Great set, love the Copermicus amd Moretus shots

[wouterdhoye]

Sweet images ?

Wouter.