Your favorite image.

[xelasnave]

Think of all the photos you may have taken and which was your favorite..either because it signalled a break thru or you took if when your house was on fire..
Maybe an object you never thought you could capture ..a photo with a new scope or a very old one or a new camera...so post your special photo and tell us about its significance in your astrophotography journey.

My favorite is now over ten years old..it is a widefield.
I practiced for two weeks to pull it all together and produce this image...getting good polar alignment took me most of those two week leading up to this photo..I had my mount pulled down by a mate and fiddled with..I cancelled playing pool that night☺ and manually guided the camera via a 150 reflector scope with an illuminated reticle for one hour and twenty minutes to get it all in one single capture..no stacking can you believe it☺...one hour twenty minutes glued to the eye piece... I nearly went crazy.
I took widefields every night for two week leading up to build up to this night..new Moon...so everything would work.
So that is why this image is special to me..I have done better I guess but nothing makes them as special as this...so please post something you are proud of and share with us the circumstances.

Alex

[xelasnave]

From best as I remember it was a canon 300 d ( 6 meg) and the standard canon lens that came with the camera and I think 400 iso althought it may have been 100 iso.

[Saturnine]

I presume from the shutter time and the fact it was taken 10 years ago, that the image was captured on good old fashioned film.
There is something captivating about a good widefield image, guess it reminds us of being out under a dark starry sky and just taking it all in.

[Saturnine]

Aaahh, you just posted that it was an 300d, that is an extraordinarily long sub for an dslr and a lot of guiding pain.

[xelasnave]

Jeff it was a canon dslr..the canon 300 d was the first dslr to get digital astrophotgraphy off the ground...up till then you could buy expensive astro cameras but the canon really started it all I would say..prior to that a few of us would use web cams or the gutz from a small didigal camera. .some web cams could do long exposures but none of mine...but they were only of use for Moon shots really...The canon 300 d started it all in my view.
I was just about to try film..I had the t ring and shutter release. ..the canon cost a little over $2k and a one gig memory cost $110 from my recollection.

I did post this photo here back in 2015 and found it was still on photo bucket..I just looked now and it is still there.
Here is a link and there are a couple there still.http://s77.photobucket.com/albums/j66/xelasnave_photos/?action=view&current=xelasnave.jpg
It was rathet flash in its day and even then my time at the eye piece was really a long spell. ..more than most ...maybe Raymo can boast houts at the eye piece with film but not me.
I think I did take a roll but never developed it cause the canon came my way...it was a gift from my wonderful father.
Alex

[xelasnave]

What no favorites.
I awoke expecting to ne presented with interesting photos and stories and yet not a one...
I guess everyone is busy eating easter eggs.
Alex

[RyanJones]

Great thread Alex, I'm looking forward to what people might post and the stories behind it.

This is my favourite so far. I've only been imaging for a bit over a year now so my favourite is going to far from the quality of others and it is. This M42 I took earlier this year. Up until Christmas all of my imaging was on a Nexstar Alt-Az mount which I could only get 22 sec subs reliably. What a difference when I could run for minutes. ( unguided at the time ). It was a whole new learning curve and I'd also just received my first Astro modified camera. For me this image marks the biggest leap forward so far for me.

[ChrisV]

My favourite would be from late 2015 or early 2016, about half a year after starting astro. I didn't like eyepieces, so got an LN300 video camera and starting live stacking onto a small 7" screen with my 8" SCT with a meade reducer. Unfortunately I have no images from then as I wasn't using a computer.

Soon after that I got an ASI224MC. This was one of my first, live stacked and stretched images 31x 5sec (no darks, flats) using some beta version of sharpcap from April that year. You can tell I didn't know how to polar align at all, but heck I was proud of it.

[Atmos]

This would be my favourite photo so far, an 18 panel mosaic of the Milky Way. It was supposed to be a 36 panel but I input the wrong coordinates for the panels further out on either side.

It was taken over two nights with a Nikon D7200 and Sigma Art 85mm. Although it hasn’t been my largest mosaic or my deepest image or my highest resolution it just shows so much of the central bulge of the Milky Way.

[xelasnave]

Thanks for contributting here Colin I for one greatly appreciate you doing so.

What a magnificent image.
I love it I would love that printed up to wallpaper one wall or maybe the ceiling.
Fantastic thanks so much for adding to the thread.
Alex

[xelasnave]

I hope others can join in who may ordinarily only post in the advanced sections.
Alex

[ChrisV]

+1. That's simply beautiful Colin. And great thread Alex. It will be interesting

[xelasnave]

I wish I had my very first wide field...I did not even know you had to focus the camera and the shot had stars about 2mm diameter. .I had no idea but I was so proud of it ... and does anyone here remember Astronomy Daily? That site disappeared never to resurface...but I posted it there as pleased as punch and I dont think anyone mentioned my focus was out...but as I said that one got me so excited I was hooked on widefield.
Alex

[Imme]

Well I'm going to have to post 2 images......one being a reference, one being the meaningful one.

The first NGC 253 is an early image of mine and to be honest, at the time I was pretty stoked having got it.

The second pic is one I took further on in my astro journey and it was the picture that I went 'wow', these countless hours spent freezing in the shed are starting to pay off!

By no means am I saying I am an expert astrophotographer but I was very pleased with this one and it spurred me on to keep learning and refining my skills.

[xelasnave]

Thanks Jon for contributing and we can have more than one favorite ..heck if you have five kids what are you going to do..have only one favorite.

And both wonderful images to boot...

So lets extend this to your favorite three deep sky shots, and your favorite planet shots and your favorite solar shots as well as widefields, the International Space Station comets and aroras..not to forget total or partial eclispses or planet transits of the Sun...but only three of each..well maybe four of each.. no three..well ten is good..its always the "ten of" thing...the ten worst plane crashes etc..the ten commandments..so ten is good ... in the interest of creativity lets keep it open post as many as you like...

But not less than one.

Keep them coming in ..just look at what the morning has produced...so if you have not been able to image for a while post now.
Alex

[Lognic04]

Ok, I have 2 favourites to post :)

First one
I had just received my new astro cam (1600) and filters, and my friend Simon was hosting a star party at his place, so I think the day or 2 before I actually got the filters and filter wheel! So this was sort of the first light for me... I arrived on the beautiful property, with a few other people imaging there, with little chickens and dogs and everything running around! So I set up, we eat, and back outside, to be met with possibly the most beautiful dark skies I had seen! I began my first LRGB sequence, I had some trouble with focus but eventually worked that out, started lum, blue subs all good, green ok, at this point it was maybe 12 am, I was sitting with Simon freezing my butt off! We saw some beautiful meteors and things, also observing with some binos, great fun! Then my mount decides to slew randomly, I was super mad because I only had one night to get this pic! Well I get that fixed after a lot of time, start capturing red frames, and then the dew rolled in, but I was happy to have gotten enough data for an image. The next day I open the lum frames, and stretch them... WOW! They were spectacular! When I got home I eventually processed them, which was fun, and at the time I lived the pic, now I look back at it and while it's not the best technically at all, I love the story behind it as that was one of the best imaging sessions I had had. I want to revisit that neb some day, only a dark sky does it justice!
The next one is probably my technical favourite image, but it doesn't have an interesting backstory , but I feel the colour is unique and the stars are mostly under control. It's the statue of liberty (NGC 3324 I think)
Thanks Alex for a wonderful thread, happy Easter!

[Paulyman]

Wow. Loving the images and the stories behind them. I’ve only been doing proper astrophotography for about 6 months and during the most consistently warm summer I can recall as well. So having to constantly battle massive amounts of thermal noise while learning to get the best from my system at the same time has been a tough learning curve. I’ll admit many of the images I’ve taken, even at the 4-6 hour mark have left me wondering whether I should just risk divorce and go for a cooled mono camera haha. But after belt modding my mount and adding temperature compensating auto focus even with warm nights dithering and good focus have drastically improved my images.

This brings me to my favourite image, which happens to be my most recent. NGC 6188 the Fighting Dragons of Ara. No sleep all night for 3.5 hours of Ha data as I also images the Tarantula. It was about lunchtime the next day when PixInsight finished the Bayer drizzle integration and when I extracted the red channel and auto stretched oh my goodness! Finally after 6 months I had something that looked great straight from the camera.

Now I need to learn how to process better.

[raymo]

I have two favourites, I.C. 2602 which is a bit minimalist, but for some unknown reason I really like. I seem to remember that it was quite well received when I originally posted it. [The full res version is nicer].
The Moon, which was my first digital eyepiece projection single frame.
Alex, love your wide field, such dedication, and no, you have me beat.
To the best of my recollection an hour was as long as I went, with ASA 25 film.
Lovely shots here, can't comment on them all, especially with most likely more to come, just enjoy.
raymo

[xelasnave]

Very good images there Logan..Is this the first time you have posted them?
I have been thinking using the zwo for widefield and using a canon lens (just the one that came with the camera) I was looking today and Bintel sell an adaptor for about $60 or $70 ...
Please keep your wonderful images coming as it is so wonderful to see a young person such as yourself producing such fine images..I take my hat off to you.
Alex

[Lognic04]

Thanks Alex :)

[xelasnave]

I have another☺
I purchased a zwo cooled mono camera with the fancy automated filter wheel and honestly had terrible buyer remorse...a conditiin of debilitating regret and guilt about making a frivolous purchase.

It was not only the money, which after the pirchase I could not justify to myself...others sure☺...and it became apparent that building a narrow band image was an extremely complicated matter and involved a great deal of time both for data capture and for processing...and clearly it was beyond a Mug like me.

The next images somewhat made me feel better not only because I produced a result that made me happy but because the object is my favorite astrophotography ibject....I always wanted to produce a colourful image of this object.
And although I was (still am having☺) problems getting it all together I produced an image that helped me realise buying the zwo was a good step.
Now the image was not processed correctly in so far as I coloured in a black and white multiple stack but as I said it made me very happy to produce an image similar to the ones I wished that I could ever since I saw the first.
I posted it here and looked the next day and it seemed over saturated so I did a second to back off the colour but feel the ideal colour is somewhere between the two.
Next year I hope to do it all the right way with a set up that totally works.
Alex

[speach]

I have 2 up to now ngc 3372 & m42

[casstony]

Here you go Alex.
Carina is a favourite because it's a simple 5 minute exposure, adjusted in PS, but it shows up well for such a simple image.

The Dumbell I like because of its contrast to the background - this image was jpegs only and black clipped - I'm looking forward to using RAWs this season.

Markarians I like because it's a bunch of galaxies that show up fairly well without fancy equipment.

I'm thinking hard about a H alpha modded camera to get better images - more detail in a shorter time, less noise and less bright stars.

[mynameiscd]

Here's my favourites,

Horsehead because im starting to get there and my wife is starting to get what I'm doing outside for so long.

Palms because what little equipment you can use to get a resonable image.

Orbs because you can also have fun while you image as well.

Cheers
Andy

[casstony]

Widefields with earthbound objects in the foreground always look good Andy, something I haven't tried yet.
How is the orb done?

[mynameiscd]

I'll sneak another widefield in.....Tank

The orb is my head lamp which is white green or red.
I tied my dog lead to the torch set the involtemeter to 30 seconds with a 10 second start delay so I could get in position.
I just swung the torch around in circles while i did a full rotation.

Cheers
Andy

[LewisM]

Probably Corona Australis - it's also my longest integration ever at 8hrs total (with an 85mm scope at that): https://www.astrobin.com/full/343506/G/

Best story is my Dark Doodad - wife unplugged the mount on me after 1.2hrs! She thought she could just swap plugs over. Ah well...I'll revisit it one day...maybe. Besides, the focus was slightly out anyway: https://www.astrobin.com/full/353879/0/

All my images are taken in suburban Canberra, right next to the airport. I don't let LP ruin my fun - I remove it instead :)

[speach]

xelasnave;
I purchased a zwo cooled mono camera with the fancy automated filter wheel and honestly had terrible buyer remorse...a conditiin of debilitating regret and guilt about making a frivolous purchase.

Yep the same here it's sat indoors for 2 years, much too time consuming to use!!!

[Gavin1234]

These are my favourites. Lagoon and Triffid because it was literally my first DSO photo attempt with my telescope. I didn’t realise till much later how lucky I was. I just plonked my mount down facing roughly south straight after assembling it. Did an auto two star alignment and then started taking 30 sec exposures for a while. Almost no processing because I didn’t know how to. I didn’t even know Triffid was in shot until I stacked them. I just used the go to on my mount to point st lagoon.

Horsehead because I understood how hard it was by this stage. From memory this took about 20 hours exposure time and days of processing time with so many road blocks and much help from people here.I was waiting for this target to come up over the horizon and ended up setting my alarm to get up at 4 am to start imaging it.

Orion because I think I’d gotten my basic procedures worked out by this stage and I got a result I was happy with in a few hours.

[xelasnave]

Excellent captures and most impressive.
Alex

[Startrek]

Stunning images Alex !! and great thread too !!

I can’t post images as I’m in Vanuatu for 8 days and the wifi is so weak, your struggling to even reply on IIS , don’t use Int roaming , Facebook , messenger or any other social media etc. ( 2 jam tins and a length of string would be a more reliable means of communication )

Should be back on deck towards the end of May , just in time for the next dark

Cheers
Martin

[xelasnave]

What really surprises me is when you show your images to someone who doesnt look at sort of thing and they say you should sell them ...no doubt its probably the first time they have ever noticed an astronomy image...a mate said I should start selling photos to recover the cost of the scope mount camera etc...heck that could take months☺ but I wonder how you would go at the markets as a little additional thing to waste money on is available at that particular stall.

I am just so impressed with the quality of the photos that are coming from folk just starting..do you ever finish..but beginers hitting the deck running and turning out great first attempts..I have seen first attempts that I wish I could have got back in the day...having tried for months and years and now where near first attempts you sometimes see...its easy just make a check list of everything to do and do right and that works.


Anyways looking for your favorite ... I remembered my real favorite..my daughter asked qbout hot stars in the Lobster Nebula region and that was the first ever astronomy question...anyways next night I was after the Cats Paw but lined up the Lobster by mistake..so I captured it to show her which made her happy.

But I cant find it...I have so many files and a dubious system of control...
Anyways your favavorite image if you would care to share.
Alex

[BruceG]

Great thread Alex - OK I will play...
The image that inspired me back in high school (too many years ago) was a colour picture of the horse head nebula by none other than David Malin that I came across in a book back then, I thought it was just so fascinating that there was so much colour and forms out there in our universe. Move on to a few years back, a friend I met sailing, told me about his telescopes and got me interested in making astronomy a practical hobby, so I set about collecting second hand gear from near and far to give it a go. Once I finally accumulated the gear required to give imaging a go, it was important to me that the first object I tried was the Horse Head Nebula. The first attempt once I had everything set to go, I got one sub and the Canon 300D battery failed. I had just got it and charged it up, but alas, the battery was stuffed so session 1 didn't count. After procuring a new battery I set about trying a second time. No live view in the 300D so trying to focus on the tiny little screen was a task in itself. Anyway, to make a long story short, below is really my first image.
It was (and still is) significant time and image for me.
Cheers,
Bruce.

[xelasnave]

You must have been so happy.
Strangley ut was my first deep sky object too thru a 80 mm horrible scope about 15 seconds and it was horrible but I was just so happy.
Your are lucky to have the first mine is gone...I remember turning up the the brightness and you could barely see it.
Still my fault it was crook.
Alex

[CalvinKlein]

These two photos of climbers on top of the Q1 building in Surfers Paradise would be my favourite for the simple reason that they took such a long to obtain (over 12 months), and I've never been so excited to capture any other images as these two.

Full moon alignments with terrestrial features are without doubt my favourite type of photo to capture.

Both images are part of timelapse / video sequences that I've posted on Vimeo / Youtube (search for Q1 Moon & Skypoint Moonrise).

[xelasnave]

Mind blowing.
Alex

[sil]

Sorry can't decide, so its two from me, and its two from him.

The Andromeda Galaxy
Possibly the biggest, boringest, most photographed subject after the Orion Nebula. M31 (https://www.astrobin.com/full/274244/B/) is still a stunning beauty I hadn't experienced. After my stroke five years ago my possibilities of any astronomy took a huge dive. Not able to travel and walking to the letterbox (in suburbia) puts me into fatigue badly. Down to one working body side makes existing a massive chore. Add to that M31 is not visible ever from my around my home and this wishlist item was close to impossible for me try to photograph.

In stepped and old colleague from work I was on good terms with. His wife had suffered a stroke long before and he came back into my life knowing how important the support would be. And it was. One day I asked if he'd be willing to take a late night trip somewhere I could try to photograph M31, so we hit up google street view looking for places we could drive and pull over where there werent trees, houses, or bright lights in front of us where M31 would reach its height of about 13 degrees above the horizon (from here in Canberra thats it really).Worked it out and went out one evening to scope it out. very good spot I thought, nice and dark, away from traffic, basically the driveway of a plot of land for sale. was bad clouds but I snapped a couple of shots to plate solve back home to confirm I had direction and estimates all good.. spot on, there was a long flat unobstructed view to the horizon and directly north was a dip/break in the distand mountain ranges so just needed to figure ideal times for M31 transiting. I was shooting DSLR from tripod so no tracking I extended my exposure time a little as I didn't know how faint to expect M31 on the night, giving me slightly streakier stars than I prefer but was willing to manually register over weeks as a result in order to get a picture. I wasn't expecting to be able to faintly see it with my eyes, nor that it would be so large in the shot, in the end when we went to shoot it was easier than I expected. It was the first time my friend had spent outside observing the sky etc he started to talk about Andromeda from his old studies and the interaction of other beings with Andromeda so I opened a skymap on my phone and as he told the tales the various entities he mentioned are there as constellations right along side. It was an epiphany for us both that these ancient legends are written across the stars, not merely convient source for naming. Knowledge of one helps understand the other. And we came from the opposite knowledge start points. It meant heaps to me to get that chance especially from someone who had been out of my a long time. Very unexpected source of support and friendship. So no longer an impossibility with the right help I'd love to go again and gather more images.
This data set is so meaningful and precious to me I've re-processed a number of times with new skills and techniques I learn and spent months of care trying to wring the quality at each step I currently could. I think its a good picture in the end (not "good considering") not great and certainly not an ideal setup to capture with. But it has a depth of meaning that makes it one of my favourites.


Now I'm Cooking
My other favourite is the Transit of Venus 2012 (https://www.astrobin.com/full/163414/0/?image_list_page=2&nc=). This one hit me hard from different unexpected directions. I had missed the previous transit so when I found out about this one it was truely a once in a lifetime chance for me. I think it started about 8mths out for me, first challenge was learn how to photograph the sun. Researching all that I got the correct baader white light solar film and built a threaded filter to go on my longest lens at the time and started photographing the sun. Each time I was refining how to focus and adjusting settings for crisp shots, evaluating each evening and noting adjustments to try next time. I spent several months refining my settings and coming up with the manual settings I wanted to use for a good nonoverexposed sun shot at midday and also went out at dawn to see what the morning sun would come out like, figuring it'd be less bright early morning and late arfternoon and the transit was going to take i think about 8hrs. I ended up settling on using bracketed exposures to cover me for a time around dawn and sunset. I had it all documented and would test as best I could on clear days.
Next item: was the transit even visible at all from my home. Well, yes, Canberra was lucky too because the entire transit was above the horizon not just part of it. My goal was first to get one photo during the event I was happy with, so all I needed now was line of sight to the sun during that period... easy just find a patch of lit ground to stand on. Hm I think what about trees, powerlines etc getting in the way. Out behind my place was an open area along a busy road so easy to pop out there and stand in any number of places to shoot. great now to plot where the sun would touc the horizon and peak in the sky then go outside with compass etc and figure out where it would travel across the sky from a fixed place I hoped to set up the camera on the day.ended up picking three spots that would have clear views at different times, noted down. Next my goal of one shot seemed unambitious so I used Starry Nights to Simulate the suns position ever hour and made a photo of it. Next I figured a string of pearls effect would be nice so I figured out a pleasant spacing so I could work out and simulate the times to achieve it. All looking good, times planned now, go back to checking shooting location spots for those time to ensure the sun was going to be clear of possible obstructions. Now the only thing left was the weather. Which forecaster to believe and were any able to forecast weeks ahead and could I alter to various forecast locations. I was figuring if weather was bad from home I could grab a lift or taxi out to lake george if weather there was much better as it has plenty of spots to get unobscurred sky views, youd be hard pressed to find where your view could be obscured at all out there. So that was my fallback.
T minus 2 weeks the good weather broke and clouds rolled in to drizzle, and kept rolling in and settling to drizzle. 14 days and nights of cloud cover no sign of the sun or stars ever it seemed. Day after day my enthusiasm from my planning was dropping and dropping. Morning of the transit I woke up before dawn and was confused looking out the window.
what are those white dots... omfg stars!! I run outside (this was pre-stroke so I could run) and every direction I looked I saw starsI ran out back and climbed the embankment to get longer views in all directions and everywhere I looked not a hint of a cloud anywhere. It was almost a religious experience so I set up a picnic blanket, my gear and supplies. i even had my celestron firstscope I'd turned into a white light solar scope for first hand viewing and sharing if any passerby happened along, though none did.it all went well, late afternoonsome patchy clouds would rush through so I wasn't able to get shots at the precise second I wanted while I waited for a cloud to pass etc. Around noon it really hit me suddenly the last time people saw this particular transit event in the four event cycle it was the one a pommy bloke called James Cook travelled to the south pacific just to make observations then afterwards heading home bumped into what we call Australia. It was an amazing connection to history I thought and while the world has changed so much since then its really a timespan of bugger all in the universe. Brought tears to my eyes and I wanted to run out into the traffic behind me and drag people out of their cars to look at the sun and scream at how insignificant wherever they are going is compared to whats happening in the sky at that moment. In the end I was all alone with this experience but I got plenty of shots across the whole day at the planned times. Oh yeah this was a week day too so I'd booked leave months ahead and said dont even think about calling me for any reason.
Prior to he event I had also been aware of a university project in Germany to redo the calculating the sun earth distance project which Cook was a part of by asking for volunteers from around the globe to take photos on the hour so they could be measured etc. I wasn't sure I'd be able to offer any shots worth using so only volunteered the day after. From memory most contributors were slack and took shots like 30sec after the hour, close but not good enough for precision needed a few of those I had the hour precise shots plus some spare shots after the hour closer to those other submitted shots so they could maybe still be used. I think in the end I was the only contributor in the southern hemisphere to capture shots for the entire event. So I didnt feel quite so useless to the project in the end, results achieved and published in German, got it as a pdf but need to trawl ebay to find the print version I guess. My little useless contribution to science, we didnt improve existing values or anything. All of this experience for me was full of highs and lows and uncertainties and I highly recommend people read Chasing Venus which tells the tale of the project cook was involved with and the monumental hardships for indiviuals and everyone involved in co-ordinating on a global scale. For those not in the know the earth sun distance was needed at the time to work out longitude from observations that could be taken aboard a ship. Ships ruled the world at that time and existing measurement had to be made at solar noon from a fixed point on land on two consecutive days. So to be able to do it from aboard a moving ship vastly reducedthis "downtime" allowing perishable goods and news to travel faster than rival countries. Plus since latitude was easy to determine to a degree or two in order to cross the pacfic or atlantic oceans ships would follow a coastline north our south to say 5 degrees long or 10 or 15 etc etc and then sail east/west along that line until they hit the next continent. It wasnt safe to just head off as you could go in a circle or follow a line that misses land etc. Consequently pirates knew ships would follow hole number longitudes so the would patrol along those lines too to find fat merchant ships out at sea and easy pickings.Ships were what drove empire growth so getting an edge by finding a way to determine longitude at seas was worth huge money to anyone who got it first. At the time most countries were hostile to each other so all sorts of special travel permissions had to be arranged for observers to cross borders to reach remote locations to make observations. They all needed the best optical equipment and state of the art precision timespieces, so not only did they have to battle geography, but weather, language barriers, countries not willing to acknowledge the travel permission and general robbers who could get rich from this fancy high tech gear. The whole endeavour when you look at it was pretty much certain to fail. For some it was a struggle for survival to reach their observing location, others had plain sailing only to fail at the destination due to natives vandalising their gear or poor weather etc. Its a fantastic read and I found myself recognising similar hardships and emotions up and down in my planning etc of the event.

So thats why the transit of venus is one of my favourites.

Both shots impacted me greatly for different reasons and in the end I am not ashamed to show them to others. They could have been better shots but they could have been far far worse.

[ChrisV]

That's a great m31 story Steve. M31 on my bucket list and I've found the place to do it - this year for sure!

[sil]

Thanks, its strange sometimes where the inspirational moments comefrom sometimes. I wish you well on your m31 hunt and suggest if you shoot orion and eta carinae that your settings will be somewhere in between. its a pretty easy item to find in live view on a camera. the hardest challenge for aussies is finding a good line of site to it at all :( if only we could get it moved up a little and a bit to the right :) with processing I was amazed how much colour and structure is in there its a very plesant target to work on with rewarding results.

[xelasnave]

Thank you Steve for sharing moreover for showing you are not just a pretty face. Images to be proud of and a wonderful post overall.
Alex

[67champ]

Hi Alex! Great to see you still here. Very long time since we communicated. Been in and out of astronomy/astro photos last 15 years... Just poking around around a little again.... Love this thread.

One of my all-time favorites would be an image I took of the near last quarter Moon in 2005 when I was still using my Fuji S5000 and holding camera handheld to the eyepiece. Let me see if I can find it. Aww yes, I found it! Taken one very late June evening in the quite of night in near perfect clear, stable, calm air.

I was still in my first year of trying to figure out what ways I could get good focus camera and what settings to use for my lunar obsession. One night I got lucky.

My other favorites would be the first time I imaged the "Curtiss Cross" and the first time I got a really good image of the "Lunar X"...

Dana T

[xelasnave]

Hi Dana.
Sorry to be late in a reply but just as I was about to reply last night my phone went down.
So good to hear from you.
Excellent image.
When I think Moon X I always think of you.
Thanks for putting up your favourite.
I hope everything in your world is going well.
Alex

[67champ]

Thanks Alex. Yes, that's me X on the Moon man.... haha..
Be well my friend.

dt