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Lunar World Record - For Charity

NickH

By NickH
in Imaging - Lunar

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NickH

NickH

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Imaging Team Achieve World Record Image

http://www.lunarworldrecord.com

An incredibly ambitious project to create the largest ground-based mosaic image of the Moon, and enter the Guinness Book of Records, has finally delivered a staggering final shot.

A team of people, comprising of some of the world's foremost astro imagers, gathered at the home of Sir Patrick Moore in April this year. Using specialist astronomy cameras with high-end amateur telescopes and special software to compile and mosaic the frames, they have created an image which has eclipsed any other so far taken of the Moon by ground-based astronomers.

The aim was to image the Moon at very high focal lengths using high frame-rate planetary cameras attached to numerous large amateur telescopes. Each telescope would take an image of a small section of the lunar surface at high resolution and these would be assembled, like a giant jigsaw puzzle, into a complete image of the 9-day old Moon.

(Thumbnail!)

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The team submitted close to 1000 panes from the individual image runs, with close to 1.2 million frames of video captured, totalling 1.1 terabytes of data. These image panes were individually stitched by each team member who then submitted their region to David Mason for final compositing into the final image. The images which make up the final master were selected based on their overall quality. A significant amount of overlap was used. In total, the image shown here utilises a total of 288 high resolution panes. The end result is a high resolution 87.4 megapixel image of the Moon, larger even then previous images taken by some of the world's largest observatories, allowing features as small as 1km to be clearly seen.

The imaging team saw the likes of Damian Peach, Pete Lawrence, Dave Tyler, Bruce Kingsley, Nick Smith, and more, work in sync on assigned segments of the Moon from Sir Patrick Moore's Selsey home and locations around the UK.

"This is a monumental image, worthy of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, and our way of honouring Sir Patrick's incredible work in mapping the Moon for the Russian and American Moon missions in the 1960s, on this, the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing", says Nick Howes, who is part of the imaging team, and came up with the original plan for the record attempt. "To have secured, and been successful with such an immense pool of imaging talent for this is a real thrill, and to be allowed to attempt it from Sir Patrick's garden only added to the excitement.

"This was a huge team effort with every single person playing a vital part", continues Nick, "additional imaging was done by Trevor Little, with David Mason, Mark Irving and Lea Irving working on other aspects of the imaging at lower focal ratios, which provided invaluable backup to the image. Special mention must go to David Mason for his amazing work on compositing the whole lot together, as even though the team were using similar equipment, differences in seeing and camera orientation made stitching the 425MB final image in Photoshop a real challenge."

Ninian Boyle, of Venturescope, and a regular contributor to Sky at Night Magazine, coordinated the team in Selsey on the night, and gave invaluable technical assistance throughout.

Guinness World Records will be presenting the team with their certificates in due course, along with a certificate to Sir Patrick for his world record as the longest running television presenter.

All proceeds from the use of the final image, which is already being mooted for use at various planetariums around the UK, and which will be available to view and purchase from the lunarworldrecord.com website, will be donated to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, a charity designated by Sir Patrick, with all team members contributing their time for free.

An official press pack is available by contacting

emailPress.png

Please donate to this worthy cause!!

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  • 2 weeks later...
NickH

NickH

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Brief update. We recieved a really wonderful email today from non other than Dr Charles Duke (aka Charlie Duke)... here's (with his kind permission) is what he has said..

"Nick: The moon image is fantastic. It brings back a lot of memories.

What an incredible team effort.

It reminds me of the same team effort that

was Apollo.

Everyone working for a common goal which resulted in the

successful landing of Apollo 11 and five more landings.

Congratulations!!!

Charlie Duke, Apollo 16, LMP"

The team are honoured to have had such a prestigious member of the Apollo team say this about our efforts to raise money for charity, which is what it's all about..

Every little helps...and again, thank you everyone so far for donating no matter how much. After meeting the team from CF, and realising just how devastating this is for sufferers and their families, it really means a lot.

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NickH

NickH

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The prints are beautiful...have a look at the small scale version in Astronomy Now for proof...

Huge huge thank you...we seem to be getting a lot of press with this, and donations are really coming on well for CF...

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barkis

barkis

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Well done again all those who contributed to this Image, and hence the Guinness WR.

The wonderful accolade from Charlie Duke is the Iicing on a big cake.

Brilliant project this was.

Ron.:)

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Trevor

Trevor

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A copy of the World Record Lunar image (one of only 3 signed copies on canvas) signed by all the team & Sir Patrick Moore is up for sale on ebay....

All proceeds from the auction will be going to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, so even if you don’t actually want it for yourself, please let as many people as you can know about it & hopefully we’ll raise lots of money for CFT :)

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140334910178

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  • 1 year later...
NickH

NickH

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Thank you everyone. It was a huge huge team effort, with some stunning work submitted by Damian/Pete/Bruce and Dave Tyler in particular really saving the day. Horrid conditions to shoot the Moon in, with cloud wrecking a few bits for some of the team, but Dave Mason put it together incredibly well.

The best thing is that Patrick was gracious enough not only to let us use his garden, but also sat out through a good portion of it, and nominated a great charity, which I hope, even our small donation has helped in some way. The more people who donate, the more people's lives with CF improve.

I say that was the best bit...in fact for me, apart from working with some amazing people, and all the charity side, getting an email from Charlie Duke endorsing it, was a thrill of a lifetime.. not much tops that.

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teh_orph

teh_orph

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Wowza, I know it's over a year late but very impressive! I know where to go now if I need to lift a bit of moon data if my mosaics have holes :D

By the way, how did you stack the video data? Was it done several times with different settings/programs to see what gave the best result?

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