Lunar Craters: Atlas Hercules Posidonius - Lacus Somniorum / Moon 91.3(-) / 20230110 0244cet

Straight after making my first lunar mosaic with the C8 EHD at prime focal length (see my previous lunar post), I wanted to test the limits of the scope’s resolving power, by switching in the barlows (2x 3x), although seeing was mediocre at best, and wind gusts were battering the scope.

This first image focused on the north-eastern limb of the moon with a Barlow 2x, putting the craters Atlas, Hercules and Posidonius in the frame, together with Lacus Somniorum and a part of Lacus Mortis.

The mount was running at lunar tracking, polar alignment was within 2 arc min, but without guiding the frame was drifting off ever so slightly over the course of a 3 1/2 min video. Any longer, and the craters would drifting too much within, or even outside of, the frame. At 720p, with only 20 frames/seconds (In spite of the ASI174MM being usb3.0, the ASIAIR only allows it to run at usb 2.0 - somewhat of an annoying limitation), that meant that the number of frames was a bit too limited to have an extensive stack (only 20% out of 3781 frames)

In spite of the drift of the frame, I didn’t want to crop the image too much, so the bottom-left has a bit of a jagged edge. Wavelet processing seemed to be quite straightforward to come to a nice detailed imaged, some tweaking of contrast and balance in Lightroom afterwards

Can’t say I’m unhappy with this first result of imaging the moon with Barlow 2x through the C8.

C8 EHD, Barlow 2x, ASI174MM, IR685, EQ6-R Pro
Photons: 720p 20ms Gain 210 210s = 3781 frames, 20% stacked
AutoStakkert, PixInsight, Adobe LightRoom
20230110 02:44 CET

Some crater-rims slightly over-exposed, I guess I setting my exposure a bit too high, or I need to ease slightly on the wavelets. In spite of that, the image resolution and detail seems in line with my expectations

Any constructive guidance is welcome

Clear Skies everybody! 🤩✨🔭

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