74% Full Moon from Tonight (April 14/15)

[astrostu]

I think this came out well in terms of no blown-out highlights. The posted version is 10% of the original size.

 

[bla]

Wow. How?

 

[Robstar1619]

Wow indeed...how did you get so close up of the moon.

 

[Mathias13]

me three...first word was 'wow'..nicely captured

 

[Renair]

Turned out well indeed, was that taken with your 500-1000mm lens?

 

[Antarctican]

Jaw dropping stuff, to get such detail. :hail:

 

[astrostu]

Thanks for the compliments. Here're the basic steps I used:

Equipment
- dSLR camera
- really big lens (4.877 m focal length, 0.61 m aperture (f/8))

Camera Settings
- 1/60th sec
- remote control


Steps

(1) Takin' lots of pictures, since at that focal length, I have a field of view much smaller than the moon's size.

(2) Set all the RAW pictures to the same color/brightness settings in Adobe Camera RAW, exporting as 16-bit TIF files.

(3) Use AutopanoPro to stitch the 23 photos together, again in 16-bit and saving as uncompressed TIF.

(4) Bringing the output into Photoshop. Desaturate. Scale down in size to something standard (in this case, the moon being 100" in diameter). Convert to a Smart Layer. Adjust levels and curves non-destructively. Add an Unsharp Mask smart filter, in this case a 150% filter at 7.5 px (since my seeing was worse than 1 arcsec, otherwise the filter should've been at 4 px (see below)).

(5) Flatten and shrink in size. Keep in mind that the best seeing on Earth from a reasonable site is about 1 arcsec. Since the moon is 30 arcmin in diameter, then the highest resolution you can expect where each pixel contains unique information is 1800 px in diameter vs the 7200 that I was editing it at. In this case, I saved the final JPG to post with the moon being 720 px across for purposes of posting here.

 

[EricBrian]

You stitched this image together? Wow. So very nice.

 

[mdcrisp2000]

(5) Flatten and shrink in size. Keep in mind that the best seeing on Earth from a reasonable site is about 1 arcsec. Since the moon is 30 arcmin in diameter, then the highest resolution you can expect where each pixel contains unique information is 1800 px in diameter vs the 7200 that I was editing it at. In this case, I saved the final JPG to post with the moon being 720 px across for purposes of posting here.

That flew straight over my head, but it's an awesome shot nonetheless. Astonishing detail.

And also, 4.877 m focal length? Some kind of telescope, I can only presume...

 

[Coldow91]

can we get a picture of that lens?

 

[Sim]

Unbelievable detail. Not to sound like a broken record, but wow.

 

[astrostu]

And also, 4.877 m focal length? Some kind of telescope, I can only presume...

can we get a picture of that lens?

I don't have a picture on-hand, but here's an old one I found that someone else took (university, in public domain, etc., so I'm including it below instead of as a link).

 

[astrostu]

Hmm ... I guess I killed the conversation by posting my "lens."

 

[paddy_pilani]

Mindblowing photo !!
Till now I used to think that pictures with such detail can only be taken by satellites..
Other photos on your website are also amazing.. :hail:

I have one question for you.. I haven't seen any telescope till now.. But, is it possible to somehow attach a DSLR to a telescope and take pictures?
What I actually mean to say is: Can I just visit an observatory and attach my DSLR to their telescope and take pictures?

 

[Nacho]

This photo had me thinking "how in the heck?"
Now that I see how you did it, awesome work man. Then you look at the number of craters on the moon and can't help but think "thank the heavens for our atmosphere!"