Lunar Imaging Session:

Moon at Waxing Gibbous Phase. Mosaic of two images.

Crater Clavius, central south region.

Apollo 15 Landing Site marked.

Caucasus and Apennine Mountains, half of Mare Imbrium. The 3 craters are Aristoteles, Plato and Archimedes. (top to bottom)

After the rain last night, I decided to setup and take my chances. I monitored cloud cover and winds aloft which affect seeing conditions. I thank God for Mr. Shan Esson for letting me sit-in in his Aviation Classes for one whole year. This allowed me to understand Aviation Weather interpretation which is very accurate. I can actually read METAR data.

I had two objectives last night. Take a full shot of the current Moon Phase, which requires 2 frames in my current setup and then take close-up shots using the webcam. The full shot is easier, all i need to do is to make sure I slew well within the frame, so that the stitch algorithm will be able to interpret well to connect the images seamlessly.

The webcam shot is kind of hard, because everything is magnified and my alt/az setup does not track well. Another thing, the Moon's movement in the sky varies. I had to kind of "hand guide" while shooting the AVI frames required for stacking in Registax.

The session was quite successful, at least for what I currently have. It has to be maximized.

The Moon Phase shot is taken using a celestron 4se with 25mm eyepiece afocal with a sandy450d on a 50mm lens F1.8 ISO200 1/8sec.

The closeup shots are taken with the same setup but using a logitech webcam, my wife's laptop at prime focus giving me around 2000mm focal length. 

Taken on OCT 6, 2011 between 21:55 to 22:30 

Happy Birthday to Me!