A colourful gibbous Moon – 7th Feb, Brisbane.

[Dennis]

Hello,

I dusted off the old C9.25 last night and took some prime focus photos of the Moon with the Canon 40D. I had to expose 2 frames to cover the whole (gibbous) Moon.

The 2 frames were layered together in CS2 where I also boosted the saturation as a separate Saturation Layer blended in at 65%. Cropped to 970x1024 from the original 3885x4100 pixel mosaic.

Oddly enough, the jet stream map for SE Qld looked extremely promising, but the actual conditions were quite ordinary? Let's keep or fingers crossed for the Titan transit tonight.

Thanks for looking!

Cheers

Dennis

[iceman (Mike)]

Just beautiful, Dennis.
Incredible detail, sharpness, and the colour is wonderful.

About time you spent some more time in our solar system

[Davros (Lauren)]

Very nice, great shot and nice colouring

[CoolhandJo (Paul)]

Nice clear shot. Wondering if the colours could be turned down just a little to give it that "real feel". However the fasle colours make the Moon look more exciting anyway I suppose!

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

Very colourful indeed.
Lovely work Dennis.

[Matty P (Matt)]

Lovely shot Dennis. Sharp as!

Although the colours are nice, I wouldn't mind seeing the a version without the colour saturation.

Nice work.

[Dennis]

Thank you to everyone for your nice words and suggested alternate representations. I’ll re-visit the raw data and see what I can come up with for you monochrome guys, hopefully after I get some good, refreshing zzzd’s from last night's all nighter!

Cheers

Dennis

[TrevorW]

Nice one like the colour

[RB (Andrew)]

Just beautiful Dennis !
Very sharp detail and probably one of the best examples of "colour saturated processing" on the moon that I've seen.

[Inmykombi (Geoff)]

Just stunning. Its a lovely image.

How did you get the colours ?
Did you enhance the natural colours via software ? or did you use filters ?

I am interested to know.

Great work.

Geoffro.

[Dennis]

Hi Geoff

I copied and pasted a Layer in CS2 and then for that layer, increased the saturation to 85%, which made the colours vivid and a little too electric.

I then altered the transparency of the layer to around 65% to blend it in with the non-saturated original. So, in summary, the colour data is in there, I just pumped it using CS3!

Cheers

Dennis

[Quark (Trevor)]

Hi Dennis,

Lovely work, don't recall seeing anything like his previously, very effective and sharp as.

Love it, well done.

Regards
Trevor

[Dennis]

Thanks Guys!

For those who are interested in the colour saturation process, here are a couple of useful links:

Zac Pujic:
http://astroimg.org/colourlunar.html

Filipe Alves:
http://www.colormoon.pt.to/

From Zac’s website:
"The colours arise from compositional differences in the Moons rocks. In general, blue indicates Titanium-rich rock while red indicates titanium-poor rock. However other processes, including maturation of the regolith by micrometeorites can also cause reddening (such as in the highlands which are generally older than the mare)."

Zac is a member of IIS.

Cheers

Dennis