The Moon - 7 days old

Derby and District Astronomical Society

Pete Hill took the following images of the Moon on the 19th April 2021. Between 21:00 and 22:30 he took a series of video clips focussing on the area around Ptolamaeus on the terminator. At that time the Moon was approx 45% waxing and placed high in the sky. The image strip at left shows the area from Ptolamaeus to the Southern Highlands - South Polar region. Craters identified are: H - Herschel, P - Ptolamaeus, A - Albategnius, Al - Alphonsus, Ar - Arzachel, Pu - Purbach, R - Regiomontanus and W - Walter. The animated GIF is made up of 9 clips taken approximately 6 mins apart to give a time lapse of just under an hour. Watch how the shadows cast by Ptolamaeus's eastern wall change, the crater floor becomes illuminated and the western crater walls are lit up. Alphonsus is hidden in shadow but part of its crater starts to become visible, the central peak in Arzachel is illuminated. The crater floor of Purbach becomes visible and the shadow on the crater floor of Regiomontanus recedes. The shadow of the central peak in Walter also recedes. The images were taken using a Celestron 9.25 SCT with F6.3 focal reducer, mounted on Heq5Pro tracking at lunar rate. Imaged with a DMK41 mono CCD, each clip 1000 frames at 15 frames /sec, electric feather touch focuser. Processed in Autostakkert, best 500 frames, wavelets in Registax 6, final processing and cropping in Photoshop CS6, GIF produced in Paint Shop pro animation shop. Images © Pete Hill.

This image shows the craters Ptolemaeus, Aphonsus and Arzachel and was taken by Peter Branson on the 4th April 2017. It was obtained from several 2000-frame videos. Each video was first processed in AutoStakkert and the best 10% of these frames were stacked. The resulting image was imported into Registax and, using the wavelets tool, further sharpening was applied. The video was taken with a ZWO ASI224-Cool high frame rate camera, operating at about 50 frames per second, through a Hutech IDAS light pollution filter attached to a Celestron C9.25 Schmitt-Cassegrain telescope. The telescope arrangement was mounted on an HEQ5 mount. Image © Peter Branson.

Chris Newsome took the following image of the Moon through the 30" reflector at Herstmonceux on the 25th October 2009 while attending their Moon Watch event with his niece. He simply pointed the camera in his mobile phone at the eyepiece! For the full story of his visit to Herstmonceux click here. Image © Chris Newsome.

The following image represents 'first light' for Chris Newsome's new Celestron C8-NGT telescope. It is a stack of around 200 frames taken with a Meade LPI camera, stacked in Registax and processed in CS2 and taken on 5th May 2006. Chris comments: "The C8-NGT is an 8-inch Newtonian on a CG5 (ASGT) mount. I have piggybacked my Skywatcher 80T on the back as a guidescope and as a result the counterbalance arm requires 29lb of weights (the normal weight of the whole setup without the 80T is 67lbs and so the guiding setup is incredibly heavy - but very steady). The ASGT mount seems to be very accurate in it's GOTO facility and when it is tracking the sky, it does so effortlessly and smoothly (even with the extra weight). But as usual the telescope doubles as a cloud making machine and I have only been able to use it once since it arrived.". Image © Chris Newsome.

Chris Newsome took the following image of the first quarter Moon on the 5th April 2006. He used a Meade LPI camera with a driven Celestron C6-N telescope. The image is a combination of 4 frames (obtained from a collection of 300) stitched together in CS2. The original stacking was carried out in Registax and the four main images were matched for brightness, contrast and levels prior to stitching together. Image © Chris Newsome.

Chris Newsome captured the following sequence of images on the 13th July 2005 using his Meade ETX 105 and LPI camera. To see these images with features named click here. Image © Chris Newsome.

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