High-Res Moon

Yesterday evening, during our astronomy club chat, I had my scope active to observe the moon. Fortunately, there have been quite stable air conditions. So I could record several craters, mostly located near the terminator for best shadows in the crater valleys 🙂

Image data:
Date: 2021-02-24 19:00 – 21:30 UTC
Location: Graz, Austria
Telescope: 256mm f/5 Newton with 2.5x Barlow
Camera: QHY462C
Moon: Phase: 32d / 92%
Moon-Diameter: 31m41s
Imaging scale: 0.19″/pixel – 1 pixel = approx. 350m on the surface of Moon
Filters: UV-IR Cut, 850nm IR Pass

Mars in opposition and (almost) all other planets

Finally, in the evening of 2020-10-08, there came a cloud free night with the moon rising not too early. Although the seeing conditions were not really faborable (high jet stream speed and rather bad layers), I had to go planet hunting.

Jupiter and Saturn were rather low, but still well placed from my home location. Mars was already well up in the sky when night fell. Inbetween there were Neptune and Uranus. Both of them not quite spectacular with persisting seeing conditions.
And finally I took a shot of the beautifully lit mountains on the Moon. The picture shows Montes Apenninus at the lower right, Montes Caucasus to the right (almost lost in the shadow) and Montes Alpes around Mare Imbrium. (North is up)

This time, I used my 10″ f/5 Newtonian with a 2.5x Barlow lens, to test oversampling capabilities. Well… The seeing conditions would rather call for no barlow at all, but I had to test the combo 🙂

All images are created from 4 separate, RGB+IR filtered video (SER) files with QHY183M camera. Each video consists of 500-10000 individual frames, from which 6-10% of the best were stacked.
The resulting resolution is 0.158 arc-seconds per pixel, which is a 3x oversampling of the 10″ scope (0.464 arc-seconds Dawes limit); Except the Moon, which is scaled to 33%

See the results processed AutoStakkert!3, Registax and Photoshop here:

Found my planetary camera and tested on Moon

As the nights are really short right now, I set up my scope at home and took a look at the moon. Seeing was not too good, but in moderate magnification, the moon still was pleasant to look at. So I thought, I did not shoot the Moon or the planets for a while. Why not give it a shot? I took my my planetary camera which was stored in their box for more than 2 years and set up for imaging…

For the “first” results, I am really pleased. Now I think I have to optimize and go for it again soon 🙂

Image properties:
102mm f7 APO, ASI120MM-S, RGB+IR Filters
Copernicus: 10% of approximately 5000 frames
Plato: 10% of approximately 11000 frames

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