~85% phase moon + Finished re-pro

[AlexN]

Ahhh... After a week full of clouds and horrible weather, I've had my astro-fix.. All be it, All I did tonight was drift align my mount and snap a quickie of the moon.. Im a happy lad!

Canon 350D + Megrez 102 F/7
1/640th sec exposure @ ISO100

slight sharpen in photoshop, no touching up, just a sharpen in camera raw (35% up from the default 25%) crop, and post.

I've posted 2 copies of the same image, the first, is the crop I want to print, the other is a closer look at the moon..

Thanks for looking
Alex.

EDIT:: Added finishing touches, and a bit more processing to get the most out of it...

Alex.

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Very nice Alex There's just something about medium focal length refractors that loves taking pictures of the moon. Excellent image

[Screwdriverone (Chris)]

Nice one Mr N,

A question though...

Why do you need to drift align the mount to take a picture of the moon???
??

Chris

[Dennis]

Nice work Alex. I poked the DMK31 at the same Moon tonight, with the x2.5 PowerMate in the Mewlon 180 and it was yukkkk! After I removed the PowerMate it looked much better, almost worth imaging, but the seeing was still not quite up to it for shooting off several AVI’s to make a mosaic, so I didn’t!

Cheers

Dennis

[RobF (Rob)]

Wowser. Nice work Alex.

[iceman (Mike)]

Beautiful image. Nice work.

[AlexN]

Thanks guys...

Chris, I drift aligned because last time I used the mount i gave it a bit of a knock.. it wasnt out by much, but enough to ruin deep sky shots.. The mount is permanently set up, its better to fix the alignment now, than doing it in a hurry next time im set up for doing deep sky imaging...(less cables to trip over!!)

Cheers.

[Garyh]

Nice one Alex! and at only 700mm fl.

[Screwdriverone (Chris)]

Originally Posted by AlexN

Thanks guys...

Chris, I drift aligned because last time I used the mount i gave it a bit of a knock.. it wasnt out by much, but enough to ruin deep sky shots.. The mount is permanently set up, its better to fix the alignment now, than doing it in a hurry next time im set up for doing deep sky imaging...(less cables to trip over!!)

Cheers.

Ahh I see, didnt think you needed extended tracking on an object so bright the exposure is in milliseconds.

Thought you may have gone cuckoo....

Cheers

Chris

[AlexN]

I have gone a bit polar alignment nutty...

Since learning how to do it with a camera + K3ccd tools, every night Im out I check it and make a few tiny tweaks... at the moment im getting 0.9 arcsec per minute drift... which is SFA! I did a week or so ago with the C11+2x barlow and 12mm ep.. got it to where I was happy with it, then plugged the webcam into the guide scope and it measured 1.2 arcsec a minute... thats pretty accurate, but it took me a bit over an hour. Using the guidescope + DBK + K3ccdtools 3 it took about 13 mins to get it to 0.9arc sec/min (after it copped a pretty solid knock out of alignment last week)

I dont just slap it down like I used to thats for sure... I got it so good that at 8400mm focal length I can keep jupiter in the CCD for about 2 hours.. Extreme!

***Hanging out for Saturn!!

[rmcpb (Rob)]

Nice shots, it seems like ages since I have done anything more than a quick peak out the window.

[AlexN]

Added a few finishing touches plus a bit of processing... LR deconvolution used to sharpen details, shadows and highlights to control the uneven exposure in dark vs lighter areas. etc etc..

Alex.