Near Full Moon images

[brianb]

Nov 30th - Moon near full & drowning out the stars - especially with hazy sky full of thin high cloud, so I decided to image the Moon. Seeing was not steady so imaging was done at prime focus of my CPC1100.

Not up to Nick Smith's standards but I'm pleased enough...

First image is of the crater Bailly.

2009 Nov 30, 2130 UT. CPC1100, Astronomik Planet Pro 742 IR pass filter, DMK41 at prime focus.

More images being processed, I'll add them to this thread as they become available. But I'm turning in now (all nighter 29th/30th!)

[neil phillips]

Nice detail Brian

[beamish]

that's very nice Brian

Karlo, turning in now mesen !

[tooth_dr]

That is very good indeed Brian, good work.

[jgs001]

Very nice and crisp Brian

[brianb]

Thanks guys!

Here are the other images:

Wargentin & Friends. 2009 Nov 30, 2131 UT.

Aristarchus. 2009 Nov 30, 2132 UT.

Tycho at local noon. 2009 Nov 30, 2134 UT.

The libration is unusual (-5 deg 20 min in latitude, -5 deg 9 min in longitude) giving a more "straight above" angle than is usual, combined with the high sun this makes an unusual image - with a bit of contrast stretch. The dark halo can be seen to consist of a zone where there are less minute craters than in the lighter halo surrounding it - if you look carefully, what looks at first impression to be "noise" in the "halo" resolves into a mass of craterlets, presumably secondary impacts from the ejecta thrown out when Tycho was formed.

Incidentally these were shot at gain 500 (fairly low), the individual movies were 600 frames long, processed using Avistack, quality filter set at 33.3% i.e. 200 frames selected. Might be better to go even lower than this.