My latest Moon Image

Originally posted by PenandSword
Look at all those bright spots on the moon....remind me of cities at night from the sky....hmmm

Hi PenandSword,

I'm glad somebody finally mentioned the lights...

Several people are commenting on the colors of blue and green and I'm thinking, 'Doesn't anybody notice the lights coming out of the craters!'

I wonder if they look like us...

PEACE and LOVE...

[edit on 6-10-2009 by rainfall]

reply to post by jra


Thanks for the info.

reply to post by marsorbust


My students would love to see more of these pictures. Any chance you post them to a typical website (I don't think I can get ATS at school)

reply to post by Alaskan Man


I can send you the bigger one if you got the bandwidth.

I do apologize for my mistake, that used to be able to handle bigger, guess they cut the max back to save some bucks.

Thanks,

Mob

Originally posted by Freezer
reply to post by ngchunter

 

Nice stuff here.

I ran your image through a moon filter.

You mean you increased the contrast right? That's the point I was trying to make earlier; the colors are very subtle by nature and only when you increase the contrast or saturation do you see them clearly. The latter is usually an even better way of teasing out the colors since you're not slaughtering the histogram to do it:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/3c23390049ed.jpg[/atsimg]
That's not what the human eye gets to see, but it is one of the benefits of digital technology.

reply to post by smyleegrl


Leave it with me and I'll see what I can setup for you.

Thanks for looking.

Mob

reply to post by ngchunter


Wow, your getting maximum resolution from your scope NgcH.

Wouldn't I love to have that res. guess its time to start saving again.

Just awesome!

Mob

Very nice!
S+F!

The darkening at the upper left area, its circular shape suggests it might have been created by an asteroid, but, regarding of the size of this feature it would have been within the range of 1/15 of the current mass of the moon. Such a body would create far more anomalies on the moon surface than we are able to see now, even if it was an event that could have happened millions of years in the past.
What puzzles and I can't get my head around it is that the moon still retains its perfect spherical nature, which is too perfect for a stellar body that is being kept hit by any kind of rock masses orbiting out there for so many years. What is also odd is that it seems radically different from any other moon we have accounted for in our solar system and and part of this oddity except the almost perfect sphere is the fine reflective almost glass like dust that covers its surface and it's responsible for the moons increased brightness and the visual effect people describe as similar with "city lights". It's like big rocks vaporize upon impact by a mysterious force.
It also has too shallow features for a solar body for the kind of torment that is evident that it has endured for untold amounts of time.

[edit on 6-10-2009 by spacebot]

To summarize, it looks and feels weird and the sound feedback from the acoustic experiments is puzzling, yet we still do not have a permanent research post up there to study it even if we had been landing people on there before 50+ years.
Isn't there something really wrong with this picture?

[edit on 6-10-2009 by spacebot]

reply to post by spacebot

The maria were formed billions (not millions) of years ago, when the moon was active. The large impact basins filled with molten magma. Very large impacts have not happened for a very long time.

The Moon is not unique.
pds.jpl.nasa.gov...

reply to post by marsorbust


Thanks! Being able to do this kind of photography has been a dream come true. You've got a good camera too, I seriously considered going with the XT instead of the XTi to save money. For astronomy they're really not too different, and the smaller pixel size of the XTi is a little less desirable for deep space astrophotography unless you have a focal reducer (I don't). The key is stacking. Even if the seeing is great you're going to get much better results from stacking. Play with wavelet sharpening at the end of the stacking process and you'll be amazed at how much detail you can pull out of a 6" scope. For anyone who doesn't have Registax and has an interest in lunar photography, get this free program:
www.astronomie.be...
With enough exposures it's like putting your telescope in space.

reply to post by Phage


So Mercury and the Moon look identical but are not, right?
Also can volcanic activity be entirely responsible for the almost too perfect spherical shape we can see? Why can't it be the other way around? Large bodies colliding with a magma covered surface would have to create even more bizarre surface patterns which in our case are absent. True that it might have been billions of years but this doesn't explain much. True that a planet needs an atmosphere in order to develop an uneven morphology on it surface but what if Mercury and our moon is the exception to the cannon? Still so many other rocky moons in our system do not look at all like these two bodies. It just has happened that these two look like they do or does this point out that they are rarities compared to the "norm"? Certainly both are oversized to be moons and in Mercury's case its not a moon at all. Also Mercury has a large iron core but our moon doesn't but there is some evidence that our moon might has an iron core too but its much smaller comparably to Mercury.

We still know far less things about Mercury than about our Moon.

Only one spacecraft has visited Mercury: Mariner 10, which was launched into an eccentric orbit that would cause it to swing past Mercury once every 176 days (two mercurian orbital periods). Pictures were taken of the surface of Mercury during the first three fly-bys, in March 1974, Sept. 1974, and March 1975. (After that, Mariner 10 exhausted the supply of fuel for its maneuvering rockets; it's still orbiting the Sun, but it's now an inert hunk of space junk.) Thus, most of what we know about Mercury comes from data over a quarter-century old

users.zoominternet.net...

Mercury surface temperature 427 ºC
Moon surface temperature 107°C.

[edit on 6-10-2009 by spacebot]

[edit on 6-10-2009 by spacebot]

That is a fantastic photo! What would one have to have to build a scope powerful enough to get a closeup of the surface?

reply to post by ngchunter


How many images did you use to get that picture?

Do you recall?

I am thinking hard on building a fork mount for the newt. I have geared steppers, the best, they're jap ones and I forget the name,
getting old, they were originally $500 each, I picked them up a while ago as old stock. I converted my Meade mount, orig LX90, to scope drive using Bartel's software and his board. I have another stepper controller which is for cnc but would work fine for this. All I need now is some worm gears and worms. Hard to find here, I might just try making my own on my lathe, and use stainless for the worms. I need a good mount but don't want to put much money into it, due to retirement.

Thanks,
mob

reply to post by AlienEyes


Anything around 8 inch and up will give very nice close ups.

The image I put up is prime no glass between camera body and telescope other than the scopes diagonal and the 8" mirror.

The mount is alt az manual but you would want a good mount to support 8 inch and up. Under really good conditions I can go up the scale pretty high in magnification. They claim a colour corrected refractor is best for the moon, I would argue the point against a good mirrored telescope.

Sadly, some of the things you need most are quite expensive, but you can do it on a budget. It takes longer thats all.

Watch for second hand gear, you might save a bundle but have a good astronomer with you before you put your money down.

Mob

very nice picture, that made my screen saver rotaion, thank you .

reply to post by Gixxer


thanks, glad you like it.

I use it as wallpaper myself.

Wish I could build a rocket! :>)

Originally posted by marsorbust
reply to post by ngchunter

 

How many images did you use to get that picture?

Do you recall?

I only stacked about 15 images for the nearly-full moon image; it was the first time I used the new XTi on my LX200 as a matter of fact.

I am thinking hard on building a fork mount for the newt. I have geared steppers, the best, they're jap ones and I forget the name,
getting old, they were originally $500 each, I picked them up a while ago as old stock. I converted my Meade mount, orig LX90, to scope drive using Bartel's software and his board. I have another stepper controller which is for cnc but would work fine for this. All I need now is some worm gears and worms. Hard to find here, I might just try making my own on my lathe, and use stainless for the worms. I need a good mount but don't want to put much money into it, due to retirement.

Thanks,
mob

That's a pretty serious ATM project, but very cool. I've seen a home-modified goto mount before, but it wasn't nearly as well thought out. I'm sure yours would turn out better. Do you plan to incorporate periodic error correction into the design? That's a pretty handy feature to include if you plan to do deep space astrophotos with it.

[edit on 6-10-2009 by ngchunter]

Well I'm disappointed.

Where are all the towers and moon bases? Not to mention all the domes and ruins?

*sarcasm off*

Seriously though, spectacular image. Our night sky is truly a wonder to behold. I just wish I had the money to invest in a quality telescope to appreciate it even more.

I'm thankful there are people such as yourself kind enough to do the hard work for us in bringing us such beautiful photo's.

Bravo, most appreciative!

reply to post by marsorbust


that's really a good photo. i've seen alot of pics of the moon, too.
thanks for sharing!

ngchunter, nice shot of the ISS in your avatar.

Ok, here's a few pics I did in the backyard, Celestron Nexstar 11 w/Canon 20Da. Be sure to right click you mouse and view image. I love to see other "astroenthusiasts." Gettin cold at night for taking shots. When you see Orion comin, you know it's gonna get cold in the Northern Hemisphere.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/8ff5367d26db.jpg[/atsimg]
This next one is during the lunar eclipse.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/9792f0407c76.jpg[/atsimg]
Maybe I can post a video of the NASA impact coming up.
Someone wanted M42 Orion nebula? I took this one to make it look like stars were falling out of the nebula like snowfall... This is like taking a picture of a green pea at 100 yards through a stirred aquarium. Please excuse the blurriness, as the atmosphere moved.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/94f3aedafd40.jpg[/atsimg]
Psalm 8: 3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; 4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him?


[edit on 7-10-2009 by Jim Scott]

[edit on 7-10-2009 by Jim Scott]