6th October 2009 - Report - A date with the Moon

It was the first clear night in what felt like ages so I was excited at the thought of getting out again. I really want to get trying out my reflector with its clean mirrors but with the moon out and in the mood for imaging I decided I would get the refractor out and challenge myself to my first mosaic image of the moon.

Location = Parents back garden

Equipment = EQ6 Pro, 4" Refractor, Laptop and Toucam II Pro

Seeing = 2/3
Trans = 1/2

Start time = 22:00

It was a bitter cold night but I dressed warmly so I felt comfortable and after a 15 minute cool down time and some visual observations of the Moon and Jupiter I was ready to image at 22:15.
The seeing conditions for the moon were decent but Jupiter was terrible looking, probably because of heat dissipation from the forest, so I focused on the moon and got to work.

I took a total of 20 AVI exposures but only needed to use 18 and thought I had captured every bit of the lunar surface but after processing all my images this morning I saw that I miss two small parts of the moons disk, what a shame but otherwise I thought I did pretty well. I had some trouble blending together the lines created by images aligned and also some brightness trouble with some of the images but I am sure this is something I will get better at as I go along.
Each AVI is composed of 500 frames, all stacked and processed in Registax 5 with the mosaic being compiled in Photoshop CS4 with some brightness adjustment and unsharp masking.

For a first attempt I am very pleased with this but I shall try again during another lunar phase and try to capture the entire surface for a complete image.

It has been a long time since I spent time with the moon and I enjoyed it but I am really looking forward to clear moonless nights so I can get DSO hunting with my 10" again.

Finish Time = 23:55