Lunar Images, to December 2019

December 3, 2019.  It was a chilly 35 degrees in the observatory tonight when I got this image of the 7.1 day old moon with the ASI183MC camera at the f/14 focus of the 7.25" Schupmann.  Seeing was very poor but transparency was good.

November 14, 2019.  I love these "Out the Spaceship Window" views of the moon.

October 4, 2019.  With breezes all day and a roaring jet stream overhead, seeing was quite poor tonight, nontheless, with the magic of lucky imaging and a friendly moon for a target, I was still able to get a nice Lunar mosaic (shown above) with the ASI-1600MM at the f/14 focus of the 7.25" Schupmann.  Zooming in on the Theophilus region gives the nice closeup below.

April 22, 2018.  After a disappointing late winter and early spring chock full of nor'easters with snow, it was nice to have a mostly clear night last night.  Using the ASI-1600MM at the f/11 focus of the C14 I got a set of 6 videos from which this lunar mosaic was constructed.  It was a bit hazy, but a lot more enjoyable than another nor'easter.

Here is a closeup of the Aristarchus region taken the same night as the whole moon image below. North is to the right and we are looking to the west towards the terminator.  This is roughly the view one would have from a lunar satellite with an altitude of 750 miles over a point 500 miles to the east of Aristarchus.  Line of sight distance to the crater is about 1000 miles. The roughly kite shaped area to the west, with Aristarchus on the near corner, is an elevated volcanic mound.  The rille in the middle of it is a collapsed lava tube.  The flooded canal on the south end of the rille is called the Cobra's head from the overal snakey appearance.  Aristarchus is the bright spot near the left edge of the image below.

February 27, 2018.  Seeing was below average with a bit of haze when the 6 videos were taken from which this image was prepared.  I used the ASI-1600MM at the f/10 focus of the C11 to take 60 second videos, no filter used. Autostakkert, keeping the best 25% of the frames, was used to align and stack followed by sharpening in Registax and composing the mosaic in PhotoShop.  PhotoMatix Essentials was used to prepare the HDR final result.

January 25, 2018.  Here is a nice view of the crater Clavius in the southern highlands.  Taken at f/6.7 with the ASI-1600MM on the red beam of my ONAG/focal reducer attached to the C14.

January 25, 2018.  The southeastern part of Mare Imbrium with the Lunar Appennines which form the boundary.  The crater Copernicus is exactly on the terminator.  The craters Pytheus and Lambert are to the north on the terminator, and the crater Eratosthenes lies at the western end of the Appennine chain.  Above it is the crater Timocharis, its floor deep in shadow, and to the right is the ringwall crater Archimedes with a lava flooded floor.  To the right of Archimedes are the craters Aristillus (above) and Autolycus (below).

January 25, 2018.  Here is a nice view of the northern polar region including the appropriately named Peary and Byrd craters.

January 25, 2018.  The image below shows the importance of viewing features on the moon at different angles of illumination.  Note the curious formation on the lava plain to the west of the Tenerife mountains.  It is indicated by a red arrow.  To my eye it looks remarkably like a rectangular fortification surrounding a tower.  Defending against whom, one wonders?  The enlargement below at a considerably higher solar angle shows that the fortifications and tower are an illusion created by the low angle of illumination in tonight's image.