Southern Uplands (Stofler region) - 07/02/14

[philjay]

Everything yesterday evening was wrong for imaging lunar but there was a window of opportunity for a quick play before the rain came at 18:30. It was still lightish therefore reducing contrast, it was blowing like owt as the Jetstream was directly overhead but I needed to use a scope and scratch the itch.

 

So this isn't the sharpest image in the world but its the best under the present circumstances I could do.

 

This is a mosaic of 5 panes taken with the IMGOH mono camera at 2000 frames each frame. Taken through the modified Mak 180. Processed in PIPP, AS2 and Registax. and mosaicked manually in PS7.

 

Im in the process of sorting some more out from last night but I don't hold much hope for them as the high mist was steadily coming across as I was snapping away.

 

It was nice to actually get to use a scope and especially prove my mods on the Mak. I would not have been able to view let alone image in daylight before these mods.

 

[catman161]

Given the conditions you described thats great phil

[dawson]

Lovely image.

Despite it being so close (in relative terms) and the fact we see it so often, it still looks like a very alien world to me.

You've picked a perfect region for inaging given the phase of the moon; well done all round.

Jd

[BAZ]

It's nice, but not POTM.

 

(Sorry, couldn't resist! )

 

 

Seriously though, that's nice, there's  a lot going off in there and you focus looks bang on.

[Brantuk]

Great image Phil - the dense pock marking really gives a sense of how much stuff, flying round in space, slammed into the moon all that time ago. It looks/feels like a hailstorm of rocks and boulders.

[philjay]

Thanks folks.

Im really pleased with this scope, it,s now my dedicated lunar scope, thats why I put so much time into it. All I need is the conditions to do it justice

. I dont usually set myself major imaging projects due to the British weather scuppering most but my main aim with this set up is to image around the 1st quarter a high res image at this scale at f15. Its going to take a large number of panes for the mosaic but it can be done.

The secret I have found is to keep each capture at the same settings and length, then when waveletting in Registax to save the first settings and use them on every subsequent pane. This way you get consistant capture and processing.

Yes Martyn, the Potm judge is really tough I hear, he,s never picked any of my images :-)

[dawson]

When I did my 60 videos in registax to make the Jupiter animation, I set the wavelets for the first image then saved them, and loaded them for the subsequent 59 stacks.

 

James

[philjay]

Yep thats what I said. It makes for consistent processing, then when manually building the mosaic each pane can be tweaked in levels, contrsst, brightness and maybe a littl unsharp mask just to get them to match the master

[dawson]

Yep thats what I said.

Sorry, missed that crucial bit.

Jd