Recent Lunar Images (5/21/21)

With a descent moon elevation and average seeing revisited a few lunar favorites. The ASI 178MC was used to acquire 1000 800x600 pixel prime focus video frames at 60 fps. Autostakkert! was used to average the best 15% (150) of frames. Brightness touches and wavelet sharpening were done using simple scripts written by me for Paintshop Pro 2021. For help identifying features  recently acquired Virtual Moon Atlas v.7.0 free software was used. In the program features are either labeled or you can click on them to display labels. The date can be set to show the location of the terminator.

Clockwise from top Bullialdus, Lubiniezky, and Agatharchides area.

Alphonsus (top) and Ptolomaeus(bottom)

Left to right Archimedes, Autolycus, Aristillus

Bullialdus with A and B above it and Konig above left.

Clockwise from top Capuanus, Mercator, Campanus, Dunthorne, Ramsden.

Clavius with Blancanus to its left.

Copernicus

Crater Eratosthenes

Crater Lambert

Left to right Lansberg, Reinhold with B to the right.

Near Full Moon Lunar Limb

As promised in the previous post below are several lunar images taken near the limb a couple days before full moon. As in the previous session images were acquired at 1024x768 in Raw16 color space at a gain of 150 achieving a 48 FPS rate. The best 200 subframes of 2000 were averaged using Autostakkert! For feature identification I use Antonin Rukl's, "Astronomy Atlas of the Moon".

Bailly --walled plain

Cavalerius and Hevelius

Clockwise: Eddington, Briggs, Seleusus craters

Darwin, Lamarck, Byrgius

Lunar Basin Grimaldi

Eroded walled plain Piazzi

Crater Pythagorus

Schickard area

Wargentin, Nasmyth, Phocylides

Krafft and Cardanus sunrise.

Beginning of Spring Lunar Images

Right up front. These are my best lunar images ever based on the details and many small craters. The moon rides high in the evening this time of the year where seeing is decent even for mid-Atlantic Maryland where imaging was done. Using 1024x768 capture area on my ZWO ASI178MC at a 150 gain a 49 FPS rate was achieved. Imaging was done at prime focus using a diagonal. I'll consider trying a straight through optical configuration next opportunity to see if even sharper images can be achieved. There are more images to come on the same night as these and a couple days later when the moon was nearly full.

Arzachel, Alphonsus, Ptolemaeus

Clavius

Copernicus Sunrise

Lunar South Region

Plato

Straight Wall

 

Tycho

Spring Lunar Images 03/26/2021

Configuration: Celestron 8/ASI178MC. 1024x768, SER video format. Stack Averaged with Autostakkert!3. Color adjustments and sharpening with wavelet sharpening with multi-unsharp mask script. Labelling below image lists some major craters. 

Bally Walled Plain

Cavalerius & Hevelius

Eddington, Briggs & Seleucus

Darwin, Lamark, & Byrgius

Grimaldi Lunar Basin

Krafft & Cardanus

Piazzi eroded walled plain. 

Pythagorus & Mare Frigorus

Schickard area

Mars

A couple of nights with above average seeing allowed me to acquire these two images of Mars. These are about a month past this years very favorable opposition so I'm pretty pleased with the results. Camera used: ASI178MC with Meade 2X Barlow and Celestron 8/AVX. Each image was stacked and wavelet sharpened from the best 20% of 3000 frames acquired at 60 fps. Frame size was 1024x768. Each image is labeled with date and time. 

Mars.11072020.21_55_01

Mars.11102020.21_46_49

Jupiter

The following are several images of Jupiter acquired in October and the beginning of November. ASI178MC was used to acquire 2000 frames at 60 fps at a capture area of 1024x768. A Meade 2X Barlow was used to magnify the image. The best 20% of frames were stacked and averaged using Autostakkert! and wavelet sharpened in Paintshop Pro 2021 using unsharp masking scripts written by the author. Jupiter's low altitude and mediocre early evening Northeast seeing have made imaging Jupiter a real challenge. 

Jupiter.11042020.17_30_02

.Jupiter.10312020.18_45_56

Jupiter.10232020.19_15_17

Jupiter.10212020.18_48_05

Jupiter.10062020.19_42_30

Close up Lunar Craters

These older  closeup images of luner craters were taken using the Celestron NexImager 5 coupled with a Meade 2X Barlow

Cleomedes

Endymion

Langrenus

Petavius

Vendelinus