Lunar day 14 - rays and ranges (Tom Gray)

Lunar day 14 - rays and ranges

Frustrated by the bright moon, I gave up my attempts to image a DSO (even with my dual narrowband filter). Apart from a full frame image, perceived wisdom tends not to photograph the 'full' moon (day 14).

I was pleasantly surprised by the contrast and detail visible. Sure you don't get those oblique views, lighting effects, and shadows, which show off the sharp features and relief so clearly. What you do get is an 'aerial' view - a patchwork of surface detail, craters, mare, mountains and rays.

This image is centred on the great crater Copernicus, 93km in diameter, with the terraced rim descending a kilometre to the surface, and central peak rising to 1.2km (compare Ben Nevis the highest mountain in UK at 1.45km). To the left is Kepler a 31km diameter crater, and top left the crater is Aristarchus - a younger, brighter, less weathered crater. The rays (impact ejecta) emanate from Kepler and Copernicus in all directions, stretching to 800km across the surrounding mare (clockwise from top imbrium, procellarum, cognitum to the top of mare nubium in the south).

To the mountains - the Appenine ridge stretches upper right for over 600km, peaking at 5km above the surface. The Mons Hadley delta where Apollo 15 landed, is visible at the top right of my image. Montes carpatus stretches west, just north Copernicus. Other notable features include the Apollo 12 and 14 landing sites, south of Copernicus, in the Oceanus procellarum (the ocean of storms) and lunar highlands respectively. A good app such as MoonGlobeHD or the excellent free Virtual Moon Atlas will provide much more detail. [ref MoonglobeHD App and Wikipedia]

This was the stacked image captured and sharpened in Envisage using a medium edge filter. I like the contrasts, even more apparent in the inverse mouse over, but will include a cleaner version, stacked, aligned and sharpened in Registax 6.

Final
Original
B
C

B

Description: The best frames automatically aligned and stacked in Registax 6 with wavelet sharpening applied.

Uploaded: ...

C

Description: An inverted image shows off these features very nicely

Uploaded: ...

Altair Astro 183 M/C Hypercams
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