The Moon in Colour

This is the same image as the previous post, taken on the 16th November.  For this version, I've enhanced the colour saturation to try and show some of the differences in the surface composition. The colours are real, but our unaided eyes are normally incapable of detecting their subtlety, which is why we tend to see the familiar shades of grey.

The blue colouration indicates areas rich in titanium, in contrast to the orange areas which have a poor titanium content.

Titanium seas

Waxing Moon

Another shot later in this month's lunar cycle, taken with my DSLR.  Rather than stack a series of images, this is a single exposure with a bit of post-processing in Photoshop to adjust levels and a mild sharpen.

At this phase, the terminator can be seen cutting through the Imbrium basin, one of my favourite areas of the Moon; the highlands around Sinus Iridum just peeping above the shadows into the early morning sunlight.

Compared to the previous shot, the Mare Crisium has also clearly moved closer to the limb, showing the effect known as libration as the Moon oscillates in it's orbit around the Earth.

Still need to resurrect the scope to get some quality close-up's!

16th November

Moon 10th Nov 2010

First shot of one of my favourite targets in a long time.  Image taken with DSLR and 420mm lens. 

Exposure: 1/100 f8 ISO 200.

For a DSLR shot, I was quite pleased with the result, 'though I really need more image scale to bring out the detail. I must get my scope out of hibernation and start imaging with that I think!

4 days past new









A dabble into Deep Sky

In an effort to break the run of solar-centric blogging, here's my first serious attempt at deep sky guided imaging. What better subject to start on than M31?

This is a stack of 1 minute exposures taken through my DSLR and 300mm lens at f4. Guiding is courtesy of my good pal Dave's wonderful Astrotrac. Never having used this kit before, I'm also indebted to him for operating it for me!

Images stacked using Deep Sky Stacker and processed to death in Photoshop. With practice, I hope one day to know how to use this software for astro images; I feel like I'm just starting to climb a very steep hill!

As a first effort I was reasonably pleased, 'though for my next attempt I think the main aim will be to actually get the thing in focus which, with luck, may improve the final result. Well, if it was perfect, I'd have nothing to improve upon!



M31 and companions