Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Mooning You!

Okay, here's part two of the Moon Project(MP).
Luckily, there were fairly clear skies tonight and the Moon was higher up in the sky.
Wait. I started earlier so that may have had something to do with it.
Anyways, here you go:



Actually not that different from other Moon pictures I've put up. If you look closely though, different features of the Moon become apparent during different phases.
Here's some close ups:





You can see some noise out on the edge; I'm not sure if that's from the camera(probably) or the scope. This was shot in black and white without any filters. I just boosted the camera's shutter speed to around 1/125. Oh and this time I used my other camera that has manual settings. The point and shoot wasn't cutting it.
So anyways, you can see some impact craters and some mountains. The images were shot at about 37X.
The chain of three craters just to the right of center are Theophilus,Cyrillus, and Catharina:



I'll tell you, identifying features on the Moon can get a little crazy for through a refractor, images appear mirror reversed or reversed and upside down depending on your set up.
Next, I'll take some pics at half phase and give you some Moon factoids.
I guess that about does it from The Flat Tire Observatory.
Oh, there's this, the Moon getting covered by some clouds:

3 comments:

John Romeo Alpha said...

Cool! I bet it was interesting to get the point and shoot to do this...was duct tape employed? :)

John Romeo Alpha said...

Does the other camera have some kind of telescope adapter mount on it?

limom said...

By some stroke of luck, the exit pupil on one of my eyepieces allowed my to butt the camera lens up against it. Using the macro setting, I was able to achieve focus.
I think next round, I'll break out the tripod, use the focus lock and see if I can't get rid of some of the noise.
Stay tuned for a post on the equipment.