ScottE and TerriZ: Great photos! It's so true how the latest camera technologies make even astrophotography approachable. Isn't it nice to be able to just "snap a few"? That's why I'm giving it a try! Not sure how the Nikon P950 (or my wife's P1000) would fare on DSO or even planets, but I'll probably try that soon too. Experimenting, with sooooo much to learn.
Thanks for sharing your images!
Moon & Mercury
Mercury is the "star" on the left side of the image.
Evening of 2021-05-13. Moon was 2.29 days old.
They made a very pretty sight without optical aid though I also viewed them with my Kasia Trading Co. 2.3x40 wide field binoculars.
I set up in a large field about 200 feet North of our house. I used a Canon T7i DLSR and a 75-300mm zoom lens on a tripod. I used a wired remote shutter release to avoid shaking the camera. I you don't have a remote shutter release you can use the camera's delayed shutter release function to accomplish the same thing.
This image was resized to 32% from the original. It was taken at 9:23 PM EDT, 230mm at f/5, ISO 800, 2.0 sec exposure.
Paul, great composition and capture! Thanks for sharing.
T
Last night's 1stQ Moon. Mare Imbrium with Vallis Alpes visible at about the 10 position.
Celestron NexStar Evolution 6 with Pixel 3.
Pretty nice for a cell phone shot through a moderate sized telescope.
The Imbrium pic is downscaled to get under the upload size limit for the forums. The full scale 12MP (5.8MB) pic is nicer on blowup. It's nearly 3 times the max 2MB forum upload allowed.
I had to do some sleuthing to identify the Vallis Alpes (Alpine Valley) feature in the photo. I noticed the linear feature in the live camera view, but didn't know it by name until looking it up.
Hadley Rille and Apollo 15 landing site
2022-11-15, 2:52 AM EST
Middlebury, VT
I was out Thursday evening 11/14/2020 and Friday morning 11/15/2022.
The seeing started out good and got better. I observed Saturn and Jupiter in the evening, Mars and the Moon in the morning. I also imaged Jupiter, Mars and the Moon. This is the best image of the Hadley Rille/Apollo 15 site that I have gotten so far (see images below or attached). It was also the best view I have gotten. Using my 12.5" f/4.5 and binoviewers at 304X I could see see most of Hadley Rille all the time and could see the most difficult northern part (north is down in the image) over 50% of the time.
Using calculated values for scale (pixels/arc sec) I measured the size of some of the features (see data below). I found something interesting though not entirely surprising. On Wikipedia average width of Hadley Rille is 0.75 miles, however, measuring it's width in a few places on the image I come up with about 1.3 miles or about 1.7 times wider. I attribute this to the fact that the edges of the Rille are blurred and therefore it appears wider that it actually is. Though I did try to compensate visually when positioning the cursor for the measurements. I superimposed a Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) image over mine. Measuring Hadley Rille based on the LRO image I come out with measurements in the 0.6-0.8 mile range.
Technical Info:
North is down
10 inch f/5.6 (1407mm fl) Newtonian (Homemade with Coulter Optics)
Camera - Modified Canon Rebel T7i (800D) (24 mega pixel) (sensor APS-C, 22.2 x 14.8 mm) (approx 1.6 x form factor)
Exp 1/100 @ ISO 3200 (video)
Eyepiece Proj with 15mm eyepiece (8110mm efl f/32.3) (5.76 x prime) (Field 0.152 x 0.099 deg)
Using 3x digital zoom in video mode- Eyepiece Proj with 15mm eyepiece (24,330mm efl. (17.3x prime) , since the zoom is digital the eff. f/ratio is still f/32)
-----------
At 3x Digital Zoom-
Field of view - 184"x104" @ 1920x1080 pixels
10.4 px / arc sec (0.096 arc sec / pixel)
-----------
Width Measurement of Hadley Rille:
South end 1
10 pixels
1.15 arc sec
1.2 miles
1.9 Km
South end 2
11 pixels
1.27 arc sec
1.3 miles
2.0 Km
Middle 1
12 pixels
1.39 arc sec
1.4 miles
2.2 Km
Middle 2
11 pixels
1.27 arc sec
1.3 miles
2.0 Km
-------------
Smallest craters readily recognizable as craters:
12 pixels
1.39 arc sec
1.4 miles
2.2 Km
----------------------------------------
Video conversion: PIPP
Stacking - Registax 6
Post Processing - Registax 6
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stack of 700 of about 3600 frames (length of video is 2 minutes).
Also see annotated image below this one.
Great photos and terrific annotation and information, Paul! Thx for doing all that. It will be helpful the next time I can check out this area of the Moon.
Greg
@pwalker Fabulous images and annotations.. Thanks. I was staring at this same plate the other night. I could see all of the rille clear as day. I've looked at it before but don't believe I've ever been able to see the entire thing. I don't know if it was seeing or not the right phase of the moon. The other night was absolutely perfect. Thanks for capturing it. I couldn't take my eyes off of it for some time. That at the trapezium had me mesmerized for a while.
Terri
Thanks Greg and Terri. I should have tried my 8" f/6 Newtion and compared the view to my 12.5" f/4.5 but it was in the car and I didn't want to take the time to get it. Usually it resides in the same roll-off shed as the 12.5".
Well here's another of my favorites.
Clavius is among my favorite targets on the Moon, both for imaging and viewing.
This is from the same night as the Apollo 15 / Hadley Rille image. 11/15/2022 @ 2:49 AM EST (Lunar day 20.86)
The sun angle was ideal for seeing and imaging the small craters.
For the crater sizes on the annotated image I used the Lunar Astronautical Chart (LAC) Series of lunar charts. These are highly details maps from the 1960's that can be downloaded from http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/mapcatalog/LAC . I magnified the images on my computer and using a mm ruler and the scale on the chart to measure the size of 3 craters.
For the one marked 2.8Km (1.75mi), on the image I measured it to be 14px, 1.6mi, 2.6Km across (1.6"). This crater was visible in the 12.5" f/4.5 Dob @ 304 power in the binoviewers and is the smallest crater I saw visually.
For the one marked 2.0Km (1.25mi), on the image I measured it to be 10px, 1.2mi, 1.9Km across (1.2").
For the one marked 1.2Km (0.75mi), on the image I measured it to be 8px, 0.9mi, 1.5Km across (0.9"). Very low contrast, poorly defined.
10" f/5.6 Newtonian, Canon T7i in video mode, 1/125sec @ ISO 1600, eyepiece projection using a 15mm eyepiece, 8110mm efl @ f/32.3 (5.76 x prime), 3x digital zoom (the 3x zoom gives 24,330mm efl) (17.3x prime) (and a Field of view of 0.051 x .0.0329 deg. for still shots and 0.051 x .0.0287 deg.for the HD video shots). The image field of view (side to side) is same you would see if observing the Moon at about 1200x using an eyepiece with a 60 degree apparent field of view (60 deg / 0.051 deg).
Thanks Greg and Terri. I should have tried my 8" f/6 Newtion and compared the view to my 12.5" f/4.5 but it was in the car and I didn't want to take the time to get it. Usually it resides in the same roll-off shed as the 12.5".
Well here's another of my favorites.
Clavius is among my favorite targets on the Moon, both for imaging and viewing.
This is from the same night as the Apollo 15 / Hadley Rille image. 11/15/2022 @ 2:49 AM EST (Lunar day 20.86)
The sun angle was ideal for seeing and imaging the small craters.For the crater sizes on the annotated image I used the Lunar Astronautical Chart (LAC) Series of lunar charts. These are highly details maps from the 1960's that can be downloaded from http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/mapcatalog/LAC . I magnified the images on my computer and using a mm ruler and the scale on the chart to measure the size of 3 craters.
For the one marked 2.8Km (1.75mi), on the image I measured it to be 14px, 1.6mi, 2.6Km across (1.6"). This crater was visible in the 12.5" f/4.5 Dob @ 304 power in the binoviewers and is the smallest crater I saw visually.
For the one marked 2.0Km (1.25mi), on the image I measured it to be 10px, 1.2mi, 1.9Km across (1.2").
For the one marked 1.2Km (0.75mi), on the image I measured it to be 8px, 0.9mi, 1.5Km across (0.9"). Very low contrast, poorly defined.10" f/5.6 Newtonian, Canon T7i in video mode, 1/125sec @ ISO 1600, eyepiece projection using a 15mm eyepiece, 8110mm efl @ f/32.3 (5.76 x prime), 3x digital zoom (the 3x zoom gives 24,330mm efl) (17.3x prime) (and a Field of view of 0.051 x .0.0329 deg. for still shots and 0.051 x .0.0287 deg.for the HD video shots). The image field of view (side to side) is same you would see if observing the Moon at about 1200x using an eyepiece with a 60 degree apparent field of view (60 deg / 0.051 deg).
Annotated version:
Wow, that is a lot of detail! Thanks for sharing.. as well as the moon chart reference. Sky Safari will not give me details inside of Clavius this small.
Terri
With the Artemis missions starting to grab headlines I hope we'll see some increased interest in features of the Moon.
I'm looking forward to next month's meeting discussion of Apollo 17.
On 3/28/2023 I took a set of 6 images along the terminator under good seeing conditions. There are 2 sections for which I took 2 images spaced about 1 1/2 hours apart. There is an image not on the terminator. Each image is annotated with details. They are arranged from north to south with overlap between each.
North is to the left in each image.
