Strongly Celestial

Looking outward; looking backward in time...

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Moon Gallery

These are my pictures of the moon. As with all of my galleries, click on the picture itself to bring up a larger, scaleable copy of the picture in a separate window; be sure to expand that window to see the full size of the image!

Date Taken: 3/23/2011

Equipment:
Orion Mak-Cassegrain 180mm
Canon T2i DSLR

Comments
This was one of the very first (if not the first) astrophotograph taken after my Orion Mak-Cass arrived. As usual when a new telescope arrives, it was cloudy for 2 straight weeks, then finally the skies cleared to reveal a beautiful moon. Being very large and easy to slew to and focus on, the moon made an obvious first target.

Date Taken: 5/9/2011

Equipment:
Orion Mak-Cassegrain 180mm
Orion StarShoot IV Solar System imager
Registax 6 stacking of .avi file

Comments
This was taken shortly after purchasing the Orion StarShoot IV imaging camera. Unlike the single-frame Canon DSLR, this image was created using Registax to stack frames from a .avi movie. This particular night, the shadows in the craters at the edge of light/dark on the moon were particularly striking. Note: I will confess that this image may be inverted from true moon orientation; I was not taking careful notes then and have not located the position on a map of the moon yet...

Date Taken: 5/9/2011

Equipment:
Orion Mak-Cassegrain 180mm
Orion StarShoot IV Solar System imager
Registax 6 stacking of .avi file

Comments
This was taken the same night as the image above. I did manage to find this series of craters on a moon map. The distinctive crater in the middle on the far right is Crater Theophilius, which sits to the east of the center of the moon, about half way to the edge as viewed from earth.

Date Taken: 11/6/2011

Equipment:
Orion Mak-Cassegrain 180mm
Canon T2i DSLR

Comments
Having left the moon alone for a number of months, I couldn't resist heading back on this cool, clear evening. The ring of lighted peaks on the western edge of Mare Humorum (south west edge of the visible image) caught my eye.

Date Taken: 2/2/2012

Equipment
Orion Mak-Cassegrain 180mm
 Orion StarShoot IV Solar System imager
 Registax 6 stacking of .avi file

Comments
This was a tough seeing night; our atmosphere was clearly turbulent as the details on the moon appeared to "swim" back and forth in the imager. Although not entirely crisp, the details on this moon crater caused me to go for an image despite the conditions. This is Crater Copernicus which is 93 km (58 miles) across and located just to the left of center on a full moon.

Note the distinctly terraced inner wall on this crater, which is relatively young by Moon standards at an estimated age of 800 million years.