Moon 29.1.10 - A quick mosaic

[Sparrow]

Just a quick mosaic from last night. Beautiful sky - shame it wasn't suitable for DSO work - so thought I'd get one of our friend the moon.

Processed in a rush this morning - plenty of time to do it again more carefully when the cloudy nights return.

[jah79]

nice!! why do ppl do mosaics instead of just normal full moon shot?

[Sparrow]

Hi Jah79.

It's partly because of the camera - this was taken using the Meade LPI which is roughly equivalent to looking at the moon through a 6mm eyepiece. The whole moon doesn't fit in the FOV of the camera. I could use a reducer to get more of the moon in view, but as the Meade resolution is only 640x480 pixels, the full image wouldn't be very high in resolution. By mosaicing it, a better quality image can be achieved with a total higher resolution - in this case the finished image is about 1500x1500 pixels.

I do use a DSLR for deep sky photography, but I've found that for lunar work, the Meade LPI gives better results using this method although I will be trying the DSLR again tonight to experiment.

Hope this helps.

[jgs001]

Nicely done Sparrow.

Jah, he's about covered it, and if you're feeling brave, you can add a barlow to the imaging train and get in even closer for each pane of the mosaic... it needs more, but the detail on the full res image tends to be better.