Some images of the Moon

Hi folks,

After a few attempts at trying to image the Moon but getting very poor results due to the poor seeing, I had another go at it the other night with the 16" SCT and the DMK camera that I..err, I mean my wife Denise...won at the Burren Star Party. Again, the seeing didn't permit any half-decent results when operating the camera at the scope's native focal length of 4000mm, so this time I tried the Atik 0.5x focal reducer. Below are a few of the images I obtained. All images taken on the night of the 27th December.

Mare Humorum


Copernicus


Clavius(my favourite crater!)


The focal reducer made a significant difference to the area of the Moon I was able to fit onto the camera frame but the outer edges of the image were a little soft. Next time, I'll try the Celestron f/6.3 focal reducer.

Finally, here's one of Clavius at 4000mm focal length (one of the better images at this focal length). Looking forward to trying it again when the seeing improves.

Micheal

Of the set I prefer the image of Copernicus - its captured well and and you can make out the rays of the ejecta (or whatever you call it). Mare Imbrium, to the bottom, is noticeabily smoother. Nice.

There's a well illuminated crater to the twelve o'clock position of Copernicus that I can't identify - but that jumps out.

The double crater (I beleive, Fauth) is very well defined.

Image of Mare Humorum appears a bit dark to me but contrast and shadows work well (and has to be said that I'm viewing on a laptop which might not do justice). Crater Gassendi with the double central features really stand out.

I only learned - today - that the central peaks of many craters are caused by a recoil effect after the impacter strikes and before the molten lava solidifies. You have a splendid image of such an artifact.

Mark

To me the second last image is the best one, looks like a plaster of paris model.
How do you find the camera? does it live up to expectations?
Have you tried it on the planets yet ??

Mark,
Thanks for the feedback.
The first one is taken near the terminator so the lighting is a bit different. The challange was in trying to balance between capturing the fainter details versus preventing too much of the bright areas from burning out the image. There are a few settings in the camera software to play with and so I will need a bit more practice as it is some time since I did some lunar imaging.

Dave,
The camera is good alright.
Settings are slightly different from the toucam, but not too different.
The difficulty with the Moon is the dynamic range of light in the image, especially near the terminator.
As you know, if you try and prevent the brighter parts from burning out, the fainter parts can become dark.
If you try and capture both the bright and darker parts, the contrast can suffer.
The key with this camera as far as I am concerned is that it captures at 60fps.
However, it doesn't make as much of an improvement over 30fps as I would have expected.
-> You still need good seeing to get good images. Poor seeing, and you will get poor images.
With the turbulent weather we have had in recent months, the seeing has, in general, been very poor, at least for me anyway.

In the above images, the reduced focal length helped mitigate the poor seeing, but the optical quality of the Atik 0.5x focal reducer didn't help the outer areas of the image. Next time, I will try the f/6.3 focal reducer instead, when the seeing doesn't permit full focal length imaging.

I have tried imaging Jupiter a couple of times but the seeing on those nights was shocking and the results were terrible.
I'm hoping to have a go at Mars shortly.

Michael.

Mike.
Nice shots.
I was imaging the Moon the other night and I had the idea to
try a HDR kind of shot but the fog scuppered me.

We all seem to want to create the image from one single
video capture.
I was thinking if you captured a dark / mid / light set of images
and then like RGB processing for planet work.
Merged and burned them in Photoshop to give you a balanced shot.

I'm hoping to try this technique out soon but the DMK camera
would be the one to use for this kind of work.

Just a thought...