Towa Moon 2019

[philj]

At least once a year I break out the old (1970s) Towa 339 80mm F15 out on the moon and last night was this years go. Despite viewing through increasing mist at about 19:30 hours I managed to grab some subs with the mirrorless Olympus OM D EM 1 Mk1.5 before the mist got too thick.

This is 50 from 80 subs (200asa at 1/ 125s) in R6 and processed in PS. In order to recover the contrast lost due to mist I have pushed it a bit so some of the high albedo features have blown but I am again impressed with this scope and camera combo. The colour version showed a tad CA on the limb and brighter craters so I converted to mono, this has helped with the detail I reckon.

The native F15 FL on the 4/3rds chip gives a super image scale, what you see below is uncropped so is what you see through the viewfinder.

 

I enjoyed this outing with the Towa, I must do it more often

Click to view full res

 

Edited December 10, 2019 by philj

[philj]

Well the clicking for high res isnt working as I though so heres some detail

[johnfosteruk]

1 hour ago, philj said:

Well the clicking for high res isnt working as I though so heres some detail

Outstanding image, Schroter's Valley is very sharp.

[nightfisher]

Wow, that old Towa still cuts it, once again nailed it to perfection, really nice image mate

[Look left]

Really super image and even in JPEG the quality really stands out. I,m sure with this quality there was not much image processing , can you describe what you did ?

[philj]

5 hours ago, Look left said:

Really super image and even in JPEG the quality really stands out. I,m sure with this quality there was not much image processing , can you describe what you did ?

Actually there was a bit of processing  not for sharpness but to rescue the contrast due to the thin layer of mist. Curves, shadow and highlight and contrast needed tweaking. Sharpening didnt take much, just a small amount on fine wavelets in R6 then fine tuning with smart sharpen  in PS. The main thing I do is make sure the scope is cooled  then I take the subs making sure image stabilisation is off and shutter is on silent high rate.