My biggest highest-res lunar mosaic ever!

[iceman (Mike)]

Hi all

This image is my biggest mosaic project ever! A hi-res mosaic made up from 19 avi's, aligned on over 150 alignment points!

Unfortunately there's some large holes in the mosaic, and some unusual angles thanks to platform resets (field rotation). It would've been quite something if the middle area was captured as well.

There's loads to see, including the straight wall (Rupes Recta), Rima Bert, Arzachel, Alphonsus and the Davey Crater Chain.

The data was captured on the night of the 1st October, with the moon directly overhead. Seeing was good to very good - at the beginning (6:30pm local time), it was around 7/10 but by the time I finished (7:30pm) it deteriorated to about 5/10.

I used my usual 10" dob on EQ platform, 5x powermate + DMK21AF04 + Astronomiks Red filter.

Registax was used for alignment and stacking, Photoshop for making the mosaic, and AstraImage and Photoshop for deconvolution and high pass filtering.

It's my best image of this region and I'm really happy with how it turned out.

The attached image is shrunken low-res - please download the full version (higher res 2000px x 1800px, better quality):

Download full-size image (450k jpeg)

Thanks for looking! Comments more than welcome.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Not too shabby at all Mike

[h0ughy (David)]

lots of potholes up there! well done mike, cant wait to see it finished

[Striker (Tony)]

Just awesome Mike.

It make me feel like I want to touch it....lol

[Lester]

That is so crisp.

Great achievement Mike.

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

Nice effort, love the crater chain lower left of the image.

[spacezebra (Petra)]

Hi Mike

That's an LPOY (Year) if ever I saw one...

Cheers Petra

[RB (Andrew)]

OMGosh that's one of the best.
Well done Mr Salway, well done !

[Dennis]

Hi Mike

Wow – that is a BIG mosaic. I love the detail on the floor of the crater Thebit and the rille you have resolved in Arzachel. Rupes Recta and the Birt surrounds look stunning – so much detail resolved. The Davey crater chain is fantastic.

The rille and dark spots in Alphonsus have been well captured too. All in all, a great mosaic that I’m sure took an awful lot of work in capturing, processing and assembling. Great job.

Cheers

Dennis

[netwolf]

Wow Mike looks great and details are crisp. Definetly a LPOD.
Regrads.

[jase (Jason)]

Great mosaic work Mike. I like the concept of the project. May have to give it a go sometime on those moonlit nights that aren't good for deepsky.

[Ric]

That's fantastic Mike, crisp and very detailed.
They must be having a drought as well all their dams are dry LOL.

great work

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

man o man I like your work-especially these lunar shots

what i especially like is how smooth and noise free the images are

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

have you ever checked what is the smallest featue you are able to resolve? 10 k? 20 K? surely much better than 50 k?

[Lee]

Originally Posted by Astroman

Nice effort, love the crater chain lower left of the image.

Yes - that crater chain is very cool, looks like a mini Shoemaker-Levy incident???

Superb work Mike.......

[iceman (Mike)]

Thanks very much for all your nice comments.. I've also received some very complimentary emails from people I don't know, thanks to the publication on SpaceWeather.

It really does make all the hard work and frustration worthwhile, so thanks again!

Originally Posted by narayan

have you ever checked what is the smallest featue you are able to resolve?

I haven't worked it out Narayan, but I will do! Thanks for the reminder. I'm imaging at approx 7500-8000mm FL.. guys like Wes Higgins usually do around 9-10m FL!!!!

[beren]

Another fantastic image .....the crater chain is intriguing

[iceman (Mike)]

Thanks Stuart!

I've reprocessed the image for better contrast and sharpness.

Attached is the small/low-res version.

Download the hi-res version here (500k jpeg)

Thanks!