DEC 13TH 11.39PM - Langrenus, Vendenilus, Petavius and Furnerius.

[paulastro]

Good terminator detail yesterday just before midnight.  Langrenus, Vendenilus, Petavius and Furnerius right on the terminator.  Took the single frame image below to record the lunation at 23.39.  Taken using SW80ED, Olympus E-M5 mk11, 1/640 second, 400 asa.  Alas it clouded up and started to snow just afterwards so I didn't have time to get my binoviewer in use.  I hope some of you did manage to get an eyeball on it, the detail I could see on the focusing screen looked very good.  The close up is a crop of the same photo.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 14, 2019 by paulastro

[geeklee]

Amazing clarity for a single frame - great focus and seeing?  My lunar images that look sharp(ish) always need lots of frames and deconvolution!

The detail on the full disc shot from terminator in about 1/5 is lovely - some great stuff to spend time on from top to bottom.

[Adam1234]

Nice photos, I really like the close up

[paulastro]

Many thanks geeklee. 

The focal length of the 80ED is 600mm, so the effective focal length at prime focus  with the Olympus on the back focusing screen is 1200mm giving a magnification of x24 to focus with.  (the Olympus is a macro 4/3 format camera which doubles the focal length because of the size of the sensor).  In addition you can then increase the magnification of  the image by up to x14 using the camera's focus magnification facility giving you an image of magnification of up to x336!  It's of great quality too and with the fine focus of the scope it's quite possible to do this.  This is really good for getting the correct focus, even though I use an AZ5 with no drive of course - though it does have slow motions.

Of course at such a mag the focus changes a lot in poor seeing - which it was on this occasion.  On such a night you do have to take quite a few frames and then go through them to find the sharpest.  I quite enjoy it though.

I tend to be fairly adverse to using any electronics at the telescope (except batteries in my torches ) and certainly don't want to spend much time processing video sequences - hence no stacking or high res for me, but good enough for records of what I am looking at visually.

EDIT: Also when I have selected the best frame, I will use Photoshop Elements to process it a little, but this doesn't usually take more than 5 minutes or so.

Edited December 14, 2019 by paulastro

[geeklee]

14 hours ago, paulastro said:

Of course at such a mag the focus changes a lot in poor seeing - which it was on this occasion.  On such a night you do have to take quite a few frames and then go through them to find the sharpest.  I quite enjoy it though.

Must be a good feeling when you find that sharp frame amongst the others 🙂

14 hours ago, paulastro said:

I tend to be fairly adverse to using any electronics at the telescope (except batteries in my torches ) and certainly don't want to spend much time processing video sequences - hence no stacking or high res for me, but good enough for records of what I am looking at visually.

😁 Previously I would use a manual mount to capture the video sequences but had to use careful framing as I would always lose X% to it moving across view during capture (with a smaller sensor camera) - so appreciate the extra effort going into focusing and capturing here.