Waxing Moon, Single-shot LRGB, 23 Apr 2018 (David Dearden)

Waxing Moon, Single-shot LRGB, 23 Apr 2018

I haven’t tried any lunar/planetary imaging in several years, but a few nights back I was setting up for a deep sky run and just for fun used Cartes du Ciel to aim my rig at the Moon before it got dark enough to start a deep sky session. It looked nice, so I ran through my filters and took single 0.5 msec exposures using L, R, G, and B. I was surprised at how much detail showed up at ~900 mm focal length (800 mm objective focal length extended a little with a coma corrector in the optical train) without any Barlow lens (you can only see this by zooming in). It was also interesting to compare the pure greyscale luminance image with the LRGB combination; some very subtle greens and other hues are there in the color image that don’t show up in greyscale. Normally of course I’d take many frames and run them through some lucky imaging analysis and stacking and some heavy deconvolution, but I didn’t do any of that to this image; this one is literally just putting single L, R, G, and B frames together in Photoshop with some very small levels adjustments to the result and no sharpening at all. I played with layer masks to get rid of the spot of overexposure near the limb below right center, but eventually decided not to mess with the image and left it alone. It’s certainly easier to set the exposures than it is with my Logitech webcam. These results make me wonder what this camera might do if I try some longer focal lengths with more proper lunar/planetary techniques. One of these days I’ll try that.

Every time I look at or image the Moon I can't help but think of the 21 astronauts (8 crews of 3, with 3 astronauts who went twice) who went there 50 years ago and so deeply inspired me as a young boy. Now many of them are gone, but their remarkable achievement (accomplished with tremendous help from many, many others, of course) remains.

Image the Universe
ZWO ASI1600MM/QHY163M

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	n/a
Started	n/a
Astrometry.net job	n/a
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):