Lunar image inspired by Shane Culleton's KAS Lecture

After experiencing one of Shane's excellent talks on the Moon at tonight's KAS meeting, I pulled out the camera, rolled back the observatory roof and grabbed a few frames.

Equipment:
LX90, f/6.3 focal reducer, Canon 300d, 26 images captured in RAW stacked in Registax, Levels tweaked and unsharp mask applied in Photoshop CS2.



Thanks for a great talk Shane.

Clear skies,

Beautiful image

Can I ask why you oriented it thus ?
I'm pretty new to this so forgive my questioning - just curious. Your South pole is oriented Westward. Is this purely for aesthethics? I was worried this evening before presenting my pics of the moon that I reverse them so that they would be "as eye would see". Having said that there is no doubt that presentation-wise your's looks much better framed as it is.
I suppose to anyone in the know it doesn't matter about the orientation - its just that the moon is so within everyones reach.

Really beautiful pic though!!! Please do tell about 'unsharp mask' I'm keen to learn all I can in this game.

there's a white light...is this heaven : ....no wait, it's the Moon by Michael O'Connell :shock:

Amazing picture Michael, it's very presentable

Thanks for the kind words lads.

John,
Personally, I don't too hung up about which orientation I should present Moon in my images. In this shot, the south pole is on the right side of the image. I could have orientated the image to place the south pole at the bottom of the shot to reflect what people would see by naked eye/binos. Alternatively, I could have orientated the image to have the south pole at the top of the image to keep it closer to official lunar observation standards. However, I decided to be a little different and show it the way I like it!

Fab image Mike! One of my favourite times to view the Moon is around this time, as you get to see some great detail along that terminator. You got a lot of it there.

Gee thanks Mike! I'm flattered. It's another great image. Well done, and thanks again!