I sadly note the passing of another moonwalker, Alan Bean (Apollo 12). Now there are only 4 men left alive who have walked on another world. So I’m posting in honor of Alan Bean and in gratitude for the inspiration his accomplishments have been to me ever since I was very young. I have very much enjoyed his painting, which is from an incredibly unique perspective. It would be just after dawn at the Apollo 12 landing site in this image. I am grateful to have lived in a time when mankind has reached so far, but I think one of the great tragedies of my generation is that in many ways we have not pressed forward as we might have. Very soon there will be no one left alive who has walked on another world, and that will be a shame.

I took this image not originally intending to do anything with it; while I was waiting for the sky to get dark I was basically just fooling around wanting to see how the ASI1600MM-cool would perform and what kind of frame rates I could get. I was extremely impressed with how easy the finding was using an automated mount connected to Cartes du Ciel, and how easy the capture was using SharpCap, which interfaces beautifully with my camera, mount, and focuser. I continued having fun with the processing, attempting to remember and relearn what I know about lunar/planetary imaging and processing. PIPP and Autostakkert still work great (although I wasn’t able to get Registax to run after very limited effort). All of this makes we want to try this camera in lunar/planetary mode with a Barlow lens and more careful focusing, and using filters to get color when appropriate. I haven’t done much of that kind of imaging in a long time believing that my gear isn’t well suited to it.

The image itself is reasonably sharp given how little effort I spent capturing it and the relatively short focal length I used. Tycho shows up well, as does Copernicus. I was surprised to see how bright the little crater near Mare Crisium is; I believe it is Proclus, which is reported to have very high albedo.

Date: 25 May 2018

Subject: Earth's Moon

Scope: AT8IN+High Point Scientific Coma Corrector (~900 mm FL)

Mount: Skywatcher EQ-6

Guiding: none

Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-cool at gain 0, -20 °C

Acquisition: SharpCap 3.1.1586.0

Exposure: 1000 frames SER captured at about 9 fps

Stacking: PIPP + Autostakkert, best 50%, automatic alignpoints, sharpened; Astronomy Tools Astroframe.