Some people may think that lunar imaging is easy, and that is true for capturing random features at medium resolution, but if you are going after some particular feature at high resolution, things become rather difficult.
For many features the best illumination angle lasts for just one day per lunar cycle, and that means about a dozen nights a year. But high res imaging doesn't work at low celestial altitude and one will loose half of those nights to the inclination of the ecliptic. The remaining six or so nights are very likely to be lost to bad weather or seeing, so it's no wonder that it took me about two years to finally capture the Marius Hills area.
The seeing was rather ordinary and the high clouds didn't help either.
This is 4 panel panorama captured with my D-K 405 and ASI120.
The image has been down-sampled to 50%.
Last edited by Stefan Buda; 07-05-2020 at 08:32 PM.
Having done a bit of lunar imaging over the past few years I understand what you are saying about how many nights a year that the terminator is in the right area for the illumination of certain targets and add in the vaguaries of the weather, adds to the degree of difficulty.
You have definitely captured a great image of the Marius Hills, well done.
As someone who hasn’t done Luna before, I’d always assumed you’d have had several nights a cycle for good illumination. Given you live in Melbourne I’m surprised you EVER managed to get it!
So much detail!
Well done
