Mooning Around..
A Collaborative Effort
If you had attended Pixie's b-day party, you might have noticed the absence of the doctor for a couple hours. Some of that time I was observing and check in the field, at other times I was busy imaging. eaterofgodz and I were working on making a Lunar Mosaic with his old 6.3 MP Canon and my 12-inch LX200. After a lot of test shots to set the proper focus and exposure, we set about making the mosaic.
Using the dual axis drives, the Moon was subdivided into 6 sections. At least 5 exposures were taken for each section, the best would be stacked and used for the final composite.
Other specs: 12-inch LX200 at f/10 (focal length = 3.04 meters)
Later that evening, eaterofgodz worked on smoothing out and getting precise matching of the sections to produce the mosaic. He would send along .tif files, and I would sharpen (using unsharp masking) and work on adjusting the contrast.
First, a small image:
The "Moon" - April 4th at ~ 10 PM EDT
And now, one at 50% of Full Scale - 2.6k x 2.1k pixels:
This is the first of (hopefully) many new collaborative astro-imaging projects including LARGE lunar crescent (plus Earthshine) and Full Moon phases, Milky Way clouds and huge nebula vistas.
And yes, plus feed scritch the Shadow Kitty (aka - Jabba the Cat).
:-)
If you had attended Pixie's b-day party, you might have noticed the absence of the doctor for a couple hours. Some of that time I was observing and check in the field, at other times I was busy imaging. eaterofgodz and I were working on making a Lunar Mosaic with his old 6.3 MP Canon and my 12-inch LX200. After a lot of test shots to set the proper focus and exposure, we set about making the mosaic.
Using the dual axis drives, the Moon was subdivided into 6 sections. At least 5 exposures were taken for each section, the best would be stacked and used for the final composite.
Other specs: 12-inch LX200 at f/10 (focal length = 3.04 meters)
Later that evening, eaterofgodz worked on smoothing out and getting precise matching of the sections to produce the mosaic. He would send along .tif files, and I would sharpen (using unsharp masking) and work on adjusting the contrast.
First, a small image:
The "Moon" - April 4th at ~ 10 PM EDT
And now, one at 50% of Full Scale - 2.6k x 2.1k pixels:
This is the first of (hopefully) many new collaborative astro-imaging projects including LARGE lunar crescent (plus Earthshine) and Full Moon phases, Milky Way clouds and huge nebula vistas.
And yes, plus feed scritch the Shadow Kitty (aka - Jabba the Cat).
:-)