Some Lunar Shot with the AR152mm Refractor
Uploaded 7/3/12

 
 Here are a few images taken
            on June 30th a few days ago of the 3/4 moon using the new Six
            inch telescope. Although it is only an ED refractor and not an
            "APO" type, it does fairly well with the digital camera,
            despite a fair amount of wash over into the black areas from
            the light from chromatic aberration. Seeing on this night was
            below average, but taking many thousands of frames as AVI movie
            files and using Autostakkert to select and register the best
            5% for the final images produced reasonable results. The challenge
            of lunar imaging is not to shoot something new, but to hone ones
            skills needed for high resolution long focal length imaging that
            can be used for other subjects such as the Sun and Planets which
            do change on daily basis. This was good practice in both taking
            and processing those extreme close up images, and good fun too!
            

Lets start with some prime focus images of the moon, here I can not get the entire moon in one image, but you can see the overall appearance of this days moon from these few wider angle views. The camera in all cases was an Imaging Source DMK51, which is 1600 x 1200 resolution, 8bit, and reduced to 1290 size here to fit your screen.

Next, well jump up the magnification 2.5x with a Televue Powermate for a closer look!

The remaining images here are now even closer, using the 5x Televue Powermate to get an equivalent focal length of around 5000mm - which is like a telephoto lens that is 17 feet long. This is where the challenge lies, in getting sharp and clear images with such a huge magnification, fighting an unsteady trembling atmosphere, keeping the target from moving out of the field, and even getting a decent composition on a nice looking field of craters or seas. Yes, this is the challenge of high resolution imaging of the moon and planets. I accept this challenge.

5x views:

Thanks for looking!

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