A very frustrating lunar session this morning, with mostly fair seeing and the occasional very good to excellent moments. The problem was that the seeing was very good or above only when the wind was blowing from a certain direction, which also had a negative effect: dew…So each 1000-2000 frames I had to clean the secondary mirror, which slowed the image acquisition process quite a lot.
Nevertheless, a few nice results emerged. Some of which are my best shots of the imaged regions.
Equipment: 355mm F/5 homemade Newtonian, 2.5x and 3x Barlow lenses, ASI 174MM, Red filter. Seeing: 6-8/10.
Copernicus (my best image yet of this magnificent crater):
Rupes Recta and Rima Birt (again, my best shot of this region):
The image above shows the region under almost the same illumination as an older image of mine (from 2013, acquired with the C11 SCT), which at the time was also an LPOD.
Plato under a very nice illumination:
One of my favorite craters: Pythagoras.
Craters Pitatus with its complex floor rilles, nearby Hesiodus with two volcanic calderas, and the concentric crater Hesiodus A.
Tycho under low illumination.
Also, a highly enhanced view of the same image, showing the inner terraces of Tycho, visible by the reflecting sunlight coming from the opposite walls of the crater. I had had to sacrifice the normally exposed lunar surface in order to see “inside Tycho”.
On this session, just before all of the above images were acquired, I was also trying to get a full-phase lunar mosaic. Unfortunately the seeing at that moment was rather poor, so only half of the mosaic turned out OK. Due to this, I had to resize the final image down to about 30% of the original. Many areas on the full resolution one are quite blurry so shrinking the image was the only way t go.
And two full-resolution areas of the mosaic under 6/10 seeing conditions.
maximus photography 