Moon - Close Up

[Big V]

Just thought I would post a few close ups of some Moon craters..These were taken with my web cam and a 10 inch telescope...

[elffinarts]

where these done making use of astrophotography software to port process the shots?

my old housemate uses some great software for stacking 500+ shots of a star or the moon and then use just the best pixels from each shot to make the final shot.

[marcotrov]

Looking at the moon always amazes me. Nice shots BigV
cheers
marco

[big pix]

Is that a foot print I can see on the left of the first shot........very unusual but very interesting..........would like to see more of this ......

[sirhc55]

Amazing

[mdboo]

Wow, i wanna do that Not sure my 24-120 will reach though

[skippy]

Wow. Makes the usual 1/4 frame efforts of a 400 or 500mm lens look pretty silly. Why the webcam? Just cause it was easier to position?

[Big V]

Used the webcam because I use that for the planets...Take an avi then select the best frames to use for the final image. If you just try and get one shot, you are going to battle with the atmospheric conditions, so by taking an avi, you increase the chances of steady seeing in some of the frames. Also I like trying to push the envelope with all of my equipment...
You can get good results with your SLR camera and I have many fine examples to support this but the conditions have to be perfect. Using the webcam means you can image when the conditions are not perfect. If the stars are twinking, then the seeing is not perfect, when the stars are still, that is a good time to try with the SLR or a point and shoot. Hope that clears things up...

[skippy]

Interesting idea. Think I'd go for heaps of shots with the SLR though; a good shot with an SLR imo would be much better than a good webcam shot.

Can't argue with the effectiveness of the telescope!

[Big V]

Skippy, when the conditions are not perfect, it is a pain in the but to take a bucket load of shots with the slr and then have to go through them all trying to find a keeper. Using the webcam, you only nedd to take a 30 sec avi at 5 frames per second and you are almost guaranteed a keeper. The software I use makes the taks of finding the good frames very easy.. I agree that when conditions are good, then nothing beats the high res of the slr.. like this



or this one with jupiter at near the bottom of the moon

[Alpha_7]

Thanks for sharing some more of your fantastic shots Big V, as always they are truely inspiring stuff. The moon and jupiter shot, is Great!!!

[skippy]

Oh yeah, that's impressive.
See your point about the number of frames, it would be quicker with the webcam screencaptures. Also good for impressing an audience - webcam on a telescope producing those images would surprise most people.

[elffinarts]

Hi Big V, is it a celestron tracking telescope? using the right software you could track the moon with the celestron and just keep using the remote on the D70 to get a heap of shots all while the d70 is tethered to the same software that the celestron is controlled by. The same stacking and sorting system you mentioned would work just as well with the 6MP shots as it does with the webcam.

There are astronomical webcams available that usse a much, much higher bit depth to the images and despite the low overall megapixel count the sensitivity is such that they do get bloody good images out of them.

[Big V]

elffinarts, I use Meade tracking telescopes and a Canon 300D camera...

[nito]

The surface of the moon has always fascinated me. Nice capture!