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[katodog]

I've been out almost every day the past week, shooting pics of the Moon. A few nights earlier in the week the camera was being very uncooperative, and the pics came out a little grainy. But the past few days, the camera has been behaving itself, and I managed some nice shots.

These are all with the Meade 12" LX200R, a Fuji S5100 DSLR, and a 40mm Plossl.


The "Kitty Cat" (as I call it)











There are a few failed attempts at some nice details, but the wind had ideas of ruining perfectly good shots. Like the following...


This one would have been nice. I was trying to get the chain of craters, and it looked pretty good on the camera, but every time I'd set the timer and hit the shutter, the wind would slowly kick up and shake the scope enough to wreck the shot.




More wind






Copernicus, despite the wind, came out halfway decent




Using the Tungsten setting.




What?? More wind?? Say it isn't so!






Did I ever mention I hate wind?

Of course, it might not have been as bad if I had all three feet down on the wheely bar. Sometimes I get lazy and only put one down, and leave the other two sides on the wheels. It ends up having a bit more shake to it.


I have quite a bit more pics, but I'm still sorting through them to find the ones I like. It's a pain in the butt having to sort through over 3000 pictures. I don't know what people did before digital. Having to deal with film would have caused me to jump off a bridge.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

I don't remember the last time I shot film.

The Lunar shots are cool and I like the tungsten setting the best.

I know it's difficult, but it seems pin point sharp focus is off a bit. Are you using the scope to focus or the camera? The wind didn't help either.

Cool stuff.

[katodog]

It's about as focused as it's gonna get. The atmosphere wasn't that clear, kinda wavy, and the wind was jiggling the scope every now and then.

I focus by putting the camera into manual focus, so it doesn't change, and then I use the JMI motor focus to do the course focus, and get it really close, and then the Meade microfocuser to get it fine. It works pretty good, but the scope has the shakes sometimes, or the atmosphere gets wavy. Then the pics suffer. I still like them, and they do have some good detail. But it would be nice to have a completely clear night with no atmospheric problems, and no wind. Then I could get the details to really stand out. That's what you get with such a long focal length. Even if a mouse farts it screws up the pictures.

Somtiems I can coax a little bit more detail out of shots by stacking about five or ten jpg frames together. Most of the time it works, but other times the pictures end up looking great until you zoom in. Then they look like crapola on a stick.


Here's one of Clavius, that was five jpg frames put together in Registax.




Here's another stack of five jpgs...of some features that both me and my cousin can't figure out what they are. We both tried using the VMA, but the details aren;t the same, and you can;t make heads or tails of the program. It works great when you have obvious craters, like Copernicus, or Clavius, but odd features like these are hard to find on the map.




And this is what I end up with alot from stacking jpg frames. The details are there, but it's all funky with the brightness and sharpness. I try all kinds of things to make these bgetter, but they just end up the same, only worse or darker.





Eh, one of these days I'll figure it out and take up a different hobby. I hear Astronomy is pretty cool, maybe I'll try that out.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Kdog,

It's good to post not only the best of the lot, but the bloopers, boners and unexplained processing results of your astro images.

It allows us to compare and contrast the various images you take and better appreciate them

Thanks for sharing.