Aristarcus, Herodotus and Vallis Schroter - 10th April

[Dennis]

Hi

Here is an image of Aristarcus, Herodotus and Vallis Schroter from 10th April. This was quite a difficult capture as the seeing was really bouncing around, with short spells of extraordinary detail popping into view.

Aristarcus is such a bright crater it was quite a challenge to obtain the optimum exposure to bring out some of the detail in the terminator, without burning out the very bright walls of Aristarcus.

Cheers

Dennis

Equipment:
Celestron C9.25, Televue x2.5 Powermate
Philips ToUcam 840

Details:
Brisbane, 10th April 2006, 21:02 AEST (GMT+10)

Capture:
K3CCDTools, 5fps, 1/33 sec.
Brightness 50%
Gamma 75%
Gain 10%

Processing:
Registax, Wavelets 1:30, 2:20.

[ving (David)]

lovely and sharp. i think i need to take some pics soon too

[iceman (Mike)]

Beautiful Dennis! I was looking at the same region last night, you captured it much better than my eye could in the terrible seeing.

[davidpretorius]

quite a challenge you say, well you have smacked that challenge in the bottom and produced a rippa.

Your close up moon shots are world class!

[Robert_T]

How do you do it Dennis, I would have been proud of these shots with 8-9/10 seeing

Amazing sharpness and 3 D feel to the craters.

Love it!

[sheeny (Al)]

Well done!

I am impressed. I know how difficult it is to get the exposure right for Aristarchus and surrounds, I'm still wrestling with it. ...and it's sharp too!

Al.

[Dennis]

A big dose of the Gamma setting in K3CCDTools helped control the dynamic range; it was quite educational seeing the effects in real time as I dragged the Gamma slider.

I have never been very successful at post capture image processing. If the image looks reasonable on the computer display, then it usually turns out okay. If the image looks so-so, then no amount of playing around after the capture has ever compensated, or perhaps my skills are not yet honed enough?

The seeing was good for that particular image for 2 or 3 minutes, and then it was all over, so a fair bit of luck was involved too.

Cheers

Dennis

[gaa_ian (Ian)]

Great shot Dennis
That is one of my favourite areas of the moon, I could imagine leaping down Vallis Schroter in a spacesuit

[Striker (Tony)]

Another beauty Dennis....well done.