Slice of the Moon

[Bernoulli]

Here's a 100% crop through a 5 inch refractor, 1140 mm, into a 50d at 1/50 sec, ISO 100. Stack of 11 images.

[Dusty]

Excellent detail !!!

[jhkphoto]

wow that's very cool!

[Bernoulli]

Here's the whole thing. I've been playing around with stacking images. Turns out it's easy to do in CS4. It reduces noise but doesn't really help with sharpness, at least not on this night with this low magnification.

[dpastern]

Good shot, plenty of great detail here!

Dave

[Celestron]

Great shots and well detailed and sharp !

[troypiggo]

I think I can see Mr Armstrong's footprints...

[L.Morey]

Great detail

[MidnightSun]

Nice one.....that's a keeper....:cool:

[OUTLAW PHOTO II]

OUTSTANDING !

[Nighthound]

Wow this looks even better on my home monitor. Great work once again!

Is your refractor an AR-5?

[Bernoulli]

Thanks for the compliments, everyone. It's a 20 year old Meade 127 APO EMC, which they probably haven't made for years. I had the lens as a paperweight in my office and the tube in a closet, so I put it back together to see if it still works.

I did some imaging tests between this 5 inch refractor and my 6 inch Maksutov, and the refractor won by a hair. They have about the same amount of glass, I guess, since the Mak has a central obstruction.

[Nighthound]

Very cool, I thought the color correction looked a bit superior to be an AR-5. I have the AR-5 but haven't used it for anything in years. Nice for an Achro just not worthy of the effort to use it for deep sky, slow too(f/9). I did manage some nice lunar shots with it but the mount isn't equipped to track so it's a bit of a pain to image with.

[Bernoulli]

Since it's cloudy, here's processed a little better and turned right-side up.

[Bernoulli]

Almost directly overhead.

[Bernoulli]

Mountains on the Moon.

[yuribox]

WOW.......

[Josue DG]

AMAZING pictures!

[Celestron]

Those are some awesome shots Bernoulli :D ! You definitly need to start using that scope more often and let the papers fly off the table ;) !

[Bernoulli]

Just before the clouds rolled in.

[wardie]

These are stunning.

[ssracer]

I'm jealous

[siddr20]

So much detail in the shots.. Nicely done!!

[kellieprinzel]

Holy ****. what lenses do ya'll have to get these shots?!

[Bill Boehme]

Absolutely outstanding. The details are really crisp.

[ssracer]

Holy ****. what lenses do ya'll have to get these shots?!
It's not a lens, its a telescope :D

[banpreso]

wow! i can almost see the foot prints and the american flag!!:D

great job

[Bill Boehme]

Holy ****. what lenses do ya'll have to get these shots?!

It's not a lens, its a telescope :D


Although ...... you can stack a couple teleconverters onto a long telephoto lens (such as a 400 or 500 mm FL) at the expense of losing some image sharpness. Until I finish rebuilding my S-C cat, my camera lens is sort of my telescope too.

[Bernoulli]

I always thought of a telescope as an "L" lens without the adjustable aperture.

[Bill Boehme]

I always thought of a telescope as an "L" lens without the adjustable aperture.

.... but, if you really want an adjustable aperture on a telescope, you could always stick a card with a hole in it in front of the telescope. ;)

[ssracer]

I always thought of a telescope as an "L" lens without the adjustable aperture.

That depends on the scope...I certainly wouldn't consider the one I have to be an L :lol:

[Bill Boehme]

That depends on the scope...I certainly wouldn't consider the one I have to be an L :lol:

Mine either ..... although the word that I would use to describe it does rhyme with "L". :p

[mspringfield]

Thanks for the compliments, everyone. It's a 20 year old Meade 127 APO EMC, which they probably haven't made for years. I had the lens as a paperweight in my office and the tube in a closet, so I put it back together to see if it still works.

Sometimes older is better.. I still have an old Meade 97E 90mm Mak that came out long before the ETX was even an idea.

Great shots.

[Bill Boehme]

You wanna talk BAD ... I have a Criterion Dynamax 8 Schmidt Cassegrain cat that is in the neighborhood of 40 years old.

[ron chappel]

What an odd photo (commenting on the original,1st page)-
It shows gorgeous detail but oddly looks to have a 'double image' effect.Maybe the multiple rims of the larger craters are screwing with my eyes?

[Lee123]

Hey Bernoulli, can I ask how you stacked your images in CS4?

[Bernoulli]

Sure Lee123, I'd be glad to. But I'm going to put it in another thread since I already had a thread on that very topic. It's called "Who Else Stacks the Moon", and I'll add the procedure to that. Look for it to pop up soon.

[Lee123]

Sure Lee123, I'd be glad to. But I'm going to put it in another thread since I already had a thread on that very topic. It's called "Who Else Stacks the Moon", and I'll add the procedure to that. Look for it to pop up soon.

Very cool...thnx :).

[scott stokes]

Ok these are AWSOME,I think that I may want to try this so what do I need and what is this going to cost me?Thanks for any info.

[Bernoulli]

Well, if you're going to resurrect my thread I'm going to use it as an excuse to post another picture!

The most important thing you need to get great moon pictures is focal length. You don't need a whole lot, anything over about 500 mm starts to show lots of interesting detail. At about 1400 mm, the moon fills the APC-sized frame of my 50D but that's actually a lot of magnification. This shot was at 1140 mm through a 5 inch refractor.

You can do pretty well with long lenses but, to get really great results, get a small telescope. An inexpensive refracting telescope will do, maybe 100 mm diameter, on a motor-driven mount and, for about $500. Maybe something like this:

http://www.telescope.com/control/product/~category_id=skyw_refr/~pcategory=skywatcherstore/~product_id=08051

A large spotting scope might work. Or you might go to the pawn shop and find a nice scope that someone sold. Then get a cheap ($30) adapter so you can mount your camera at prime focus, and you're ready to go.

So for the price of a nice lens you can be in business. And the telescope is also handy for birds and suburban wildlife during the day.

[Bill Boehme]

Bernoulli, I have been meaning to ask what reference points do you use when "righting" the moon (putting north at the top)?

... and what sort of suburban wildlife? :)

[Bernoulli]

OK Bill, get out your Rukl Lunar Atlas!

Draw a line from the right edge of Ptolemaeus to the left edge of Aristillus.

Then tell PhotoShop to make that line vertical and you'll have perfect map alignment.

Suburban wildlife where I live = skunks!

[scott stokes]

Thanks alot Bernoulli I think that I will look into this some more.Your shots are awsome.thanks scott

[BigB778]

WoW Nice shots

[Bill Boehme]

OK Bill, get out your Rukl Lunar Atlas!

Draw a line from the right edge of Ptolemaeus to the left edge of Aristillus.

Then tell PhotoShop to make that line vertical and you'll have perfect map alignment.

Suburban wildlife where I live = skunks!

Thanks for the great information.

We have possums, coons, skunks, armadillos, and coyotes. When I take their pictures, they are usually inside a Hav-A-Heart trap and very unhappy with me. :D This fellow is on his way to a new location to steal cat food from somebody else for a while.

360063

[Bernoulli]

Yeah, we have them too. Possums gave up on evolving about 50 million years ago, I guess.

Edited to add: That rather stoned looking girl in my avatar is on a personal crusade against possums.

[Bill Boehme]

Yeah, we have them too. Possums gave up on evolving about 50 millions years ago, I guess.

Edited to add: That rather stoned looking girl in my avatar is on a personal crusade against possums.

My avatar cat, Mr. Squeak, is also on a crusade against them also since he got bit by one of them several years ago and had a really nasty infection as a result of the bite.

Properly cooked, they taste like chicken ... or so I am told.

[bjordan]

My avatar cat, Mr. Squeak, is also on a crusade against them also since he got bit by one of them several years ago and had a really nasty infection as a result of the bite.

Properly cooked, they taste like chicken ... or so I am told.

From someone with southern roots, I've heard a bit about this. There are two tricks to cooking opossum. One, feed him corn for a week first to clean him out. Second, after you kill him, make sure he doesn't get away.

Be proud of your cat! One night last fall I heard a rustling out back. I went out and saw my cat watching a possum digging through a garbage sack. She did nothing. I got my longbow and was at full draw at 5 yards when I realized I didn't want to eat something that ate my trash! I drew down and the thing looked at me and respectfully slinked away.

[troypiggo]

Remind me never to dig through your trash for fear of getting an arrow through the back of my head... then eaten... :)

[bjordan]

Remind me never to dig through your trash for fear of getting an arrow through the back of my head... then eaten... :)

Don't worry, I just switched to wooden arrows and the safest spot to stand is right where I'm aiming!

To swerve back towards the topic, I tried to shoot the moon last night - s2is afocal through a 4" reflector and it was lousy. All I could get were a couple of blurry craters. I know the sky fairly well with my 12x60 binos, but I'm clueless about setting up a scope.

Kudos to Bernoulli on these great pictures!