It was a clear Saturday afternoon with my home chores out of the way, so I took the opportunity to setup my ED80 telescope and mount to capture the waxing gibbous Moon (about 4 days out from Full Moon).
I captured the Moon against the evening twilight sky, so the background was still blue and it made colour balance a bit more difficult than normal. It would’ve been easier and better to wait an hour or two until the Moon was against a black sky, but I had to head inside for time with the family.
As usual I’ve produced a few versions. The first is a saturated colour version, where the colours of the Moon are brought out in processing, as well as a BW version, and a comparison showing a RAW frame vs the processed ones.
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The processed version was made up using 80 frames stacked in Registax to improve signal to noise ratio, followed by wavelets for sharpening. It was then worked in photoshop, including noise reduction, levels, curves and saturation. The techniques are described in my blog post,
How to Create a Saturated Colour Full Moon.
Also some gear shots..
I also had my Sigma 400mm lens on the Canon 40D and took some shots at different focal lengths for comparison. They’ll be the subject of a future post.
Thanks for looking.