Moon at 2000mm .

[brian nordstrom]

Hi all , here is a moon shot I took the other morning at about 3am after work .
This is a Raw shot taken with my sony A200 dslr , Istar 127mm achromat and TV , 2 inch 2x Powermate giving a 2000mm fl .
Comments ? please.
Brian.

[cometcatcher]

Nice moon shot Brian, although I wish it wasn't so bright. It's mucking up my deep sky attempts lol.

[Clancy Lane]

Best I've seen for a long time Brian!

You must be keen, doing this after working all night.

Cheers,

Phil

[sheeny]

That's "raw"?

By that I assume you mean Straight from the camera without any processing other than cropping?

Al.

[batema]

Beautiful.

[brian nordstrom]

:thumbsup: That's it Al , not even sized or cropped , the IIS website does a pretty good job of doing that for me .
Its the best of about 60 I took , the moon was only about 40 degrees off the eastern horizon , probably in the Haze layer still due to all the burn offs happening up here .
From memory , 1/400th a second and ISO 800 .
Brian.

[brian nordstrom]

:) Thanks Kevin , Phil and Mark , I am slowly going over to the dark side but I do love viewing the moon , have done now for 30 years or so , its always different .
I am going to try again tomorrow morning at about 4-5am so keep posted .
Brian.

[Larryp]

Nice, Brian :thumbsup:

[04Stefan07]

Wow nice shot mate!

Great detail.

[MattT]

Strike me stupid Brian....wow where is the CA may I ask? I can't see any on my apple, am tempted to get a camera....no wait a minute think I'll get an Istar objective instead :lol:
Amazingly beautiful pic. Is that the X just about to pop out too?
Matt

[brian nordstrom]

:thumbsup: Thanks to all those who take this photo for what it is , shows what a lowly old achromat is capable of , great moon photos .

You should see the moon in my 127mm Istar and 14mm TV Radian , sweet , and anyone that holidays up north here is welcome around to see for yourselves.
Brian.

[cometcatcher]

How does the Istar compare to the Sky Watcher you had Brian? I think from memory you had a SW 150mm F8?

[brian nordstrom]

:) Hi Kevin , I still have the 150mm f8 but its still in NZ , my Nephew is using it and personally I think I would be hard pressed to get it back now :lol: he loves it and at least its getting used .

On a comparo , from memory I would say the Istar is a lot better , Perfect star test ( well a little SA , but invisible otherwise ) , smoother figure , lot better cell , better corrected and coated and way less CA , all in all the better QC shows , you get a good one every time , not the ( sadly ) lucky dip of Synta's QC .
I had a bit of a session with a friends 150mm f8 reciently and I saw the same thing , there is nothing wrong with the Synta 120-150mm scopes they are very good ( the bargain of the decade at the moment ) but the Istar objectives are a step up in all ways , I cant be happier with mine and I think ;) the photos speak for them selves .

Here is another one taken the other morning , slightly different settings and not as sharp as the 1st one but close , as I said the moon was only 30-40 degrees up and the smoke haze is bad at the moment .
Brian.

[cometcatcher]

Okay thanks.

That shot is good also in spite of haze. If you were to stack a few frames and do some post processing, the shots would be spectacular.

[brian nordstrom]

:shrug: Thanks Kevin , but 2 things ,
I don't know how :question: ,
And I like these shots , balls and all :rofl: .
but thanks Kevin , yes I will tell ya this AP thing is addictive alright , I was out at 4.30 this morning trying for some more Luna shots , and Jupiter but it was that 'Sucker Hole' type of clouds , annoying so maybe tomorrow .
This was the best I got , between the big old fluffy ones , and above them the high clouds that don't stop moving ,, terrible I know sorry .
Brian.

[cometcatcher]

Yeah unfortunately AP photo processing is a never ending journey up a very steep hill. But it would be well worth it, considering how much could be coaxed out of the Istar.

Hope you don't mind, I've attached a copy of your image that's been "squeezed" to show more detail and the CA toned down a bit. The noise level has also risen, which is why we stack lots of frames, so we can squeeze them for all they're worth to get the very best out of the optics.

If you haven't done any photo manipulation before, perhaps a good program to start with is a little freeware program called Irfanview. It allows you to do basic image manipulation. If you don't like it, at least no money has been lost.

I'm presently mucking about with my SW120 doing forbidden deep sky with it while I'm saving for a better ED scope.

[brian nordstrom]

:D Woaw , thanks Kevin but what CA ? I don't see any , but the dark side is winning ,,,,,,
Anything you can do with my last posting ,, didn't think so .
Brian.

[cometcatcher]

The last one is a bit far gone I'm afraid. :P

The CA is most prominent on the limb and in the crater shadows as a purple haze. You can only see it once you've turned to the dark side. :D It's minimal and they are still nice photos. Much less than that Long Perng disaster we both had. That was such a disappointment. The construction quality of the tube was inversely proportional to the optics.

Anyway I'm going OT. Something I'm good at. I'm off to see how much CA my F5 SW achro throws with the Jewel box.

Luke..... come to the dark side...... :D

[brian nordstrom]

:rofl: not fair Kevin , its invisible to my REAL eyes ,,,
Lets not mention that 90mm f500 OK ,,,, disappointed is ??? , the dark side ,, yes I have a 100mm f500 SW BD and its better in the CA than the 90mm was .....
Brian.

[brian nordstrom]

Here is one for the dark side Kevin .
This is as BLUE as it gets ( the most colour I have seen with the Istar Achromat ) , one of the 60 I took , this is thru the smoke , its RED , so the BLUE shone thru , I think , see if you can draw out a bit more ,
There is only one , Luke ...:lol:.

Brian.

[cometcatcher]

I'm afraid that one is dead, Jim. :(

[brian nordstrom]

:thumbsup: But not as we know it !
Thought so .
Its still a nice shade of Blue . Tho .
Brian.

[FlashDrive]

Yeah...good shot Brian....:thumbsup:

Flash.....

[dutch2]

Awesome. Well done.:thumbsup: