Recent moon image

Aloicious · May 30, 2012

Got a good shot of the moon last night, processed it a couple different ways. it was actually shot just prior to full sun setting, so there is a blue cast on the lower portion of it, but this is a 'normal' processing of it:

the harsh sidelighting brought out some nice detail, so I re-processed it to bring out as much surface detail as I could. it doesn't look like it would just looking at it, but all the details are interesting to examine.

Aloicious · May 30, 2012

well, apparently they're getting auto-resized. they're normally 1200px on the long side, but the post is scaling them down to 800...
if you want to look at the 1200px ones, here's links to them...
normal:
http://i461.photobucket.com/albums/qq337/guitargeek1968/astrophotography/moon-5-29-12_0001.jpg
details:
http://i461.photobucket.com/albums/qq337/guitargeek1968/astrophotography/moon-5-29-12.jpg

412 Burgh · May 30, 2012

which lens was used?

Aloicious · May 30, 2012

my 8" ritchey-Chretien 1600mm f8 telescope and D800:

jfrabat · May 30, 2012

So... that's a pretty big lens then, huh?

412 Burgh · May 30, 2012

Aloicious said:
my 8" ritchey-Chretien 1600mm f8 telescope and D800:

ummm...that's crazy cool

echoyjeff222 · May 30, 2012

great detail, but for some reason it seems abruptly cut off ... not sure if it's because of the post processing or what but it's a really harsh line b/w the moon and the blackness.

Aloicious · May 30, 2012

jfrabat said:
So... that's a pretty big lens then, huh?

heh yeah, it's pretty large, but that kind of telescope is a lot more compact than my other one which is the same diameter (8"), but it's a newtonian type, so it's like ~4.5 feet long.

412 Burgh said:
ummm...that's crazy cool

Thanks, astrophotography extremely difficult, I'm still learning, but it's a blast

echoyjeff222 said:
great detail, but for some reason it seems abruptly cut off ... not sure if it's because of the post processing or what but it's a really harsh line b/w the moon and the blackness.

that's pretty normal, I think it was only roughly 60% full that night, the edge of the light is normally pretty harsh, especially when it's side lit like that. you can see the small highlights right on the border of the light/dark area which are edges of craters and other surface anomalies.

480sparky · May 30, 2012

I should get Phoebe out more often this summer.

prodigy2k7 · May 30, 2012

Why is the top of the moon so soft?

Cool photo though.

480sparky · May 30, 2012

prodigy2k7 said:
Why is the top of the moon so soft?

Cool photo though.

Might have been turbulence in the air. Not only do telescopes magnify the subject, they also magnify the 'boiling' effect of all the atmosphere 'twixt the camera & the edge of space.

Trever1t · May 30, 2012

wild. There's so many sub-sects of photography it's unfathomable. Nice rig, great detail! I'd love to see some deep space shots yo manage with that telescope and D800!

Aloicious · May 30, 2012

Trever1t said:
wild. There's so many sub-sects of photography it's unfathomable. Nice rig, great detail! I'd love to see some deep space shots yo manage with that telescope and D800!

yeah, I'm trying to work on some tracking/guiding issues I'm having with the scope mount right now, but soon I'll try to shoot some deep space objects. I live really close to some very dark sky areas so it should be pretty good, I'm also working on building a fast imaging scope (~500mm focal length around f3.2ish) that will help out with stuff like that too.

480sparky said:
prodigy2k7 said:

Why is the top of the moon so soft?

Cool photo though.

Click to expand...

Might have been turbulence in the air. Not only do telescopes magnify the subject, they also magnify the 'boiling' effect of all the atmosphere 'twixt the camera & the edge of space.

bingo, I was out in a desert and this image was taken just after sunset before the sky was fully dark, so it was still pretty warm and starting to cool down. so the temperature differences (among other things) through the atmosphere give different refractive indexes and are magnified by the telescope, and the closer to the horizon you get, the more atmosphere you have to shoot though, which causes more problems, this was probably 40 degrees above the horizon or so.

Sparky, is that celestron a 9.25" SCT? it seems larger than the 8" scopes I'm used to in comparison with the camera body.

Ernicus · May 30, 2012

I'm jealous. I'd love to see some shots of Jupiter. I was able to see it once on and old telescope I had...barely made out saturn...looked more like a start with a ring...but I saw it. Took me like 2 hours to find it. lol

Aloicious · May 30, 2012

planetary imaging is usually best done through video then stacking the individual frames, I really want to try it out with the D800 video settings, it should do pretty well. once I get the tracing setup more accurately, I'm for sure going to try it out.

in fact I'm a member of the local astronomical society, and we have a observatory that the club owns which is pretty close to me, and they have a huge 32" diameter reflector scope that I want to hook the camera up to...in astronomy world, the larger the diameter of the mirror/cell, the more desireable since they can take in and focus more light and make fainter things brighter to the eye, and camera. I'd love to get some DSOs and planetary shots with that...