Enjoying the Moon as Nights Get Cooler

I wasn't planning on taking the telescope out today, but after a beautiful day outside it looked like it would be a pleasant night. It wasn't very hot out during the day, and it turned out that the evening was incredibly satisfying.

It's starting to get dark a little earlier, but the weather is finally beginning to cool off. I love taking the telescope out when the air is a little more crisp, there's less humidity and fewer bugs.

The time for Jupiter is about over, but I hadn't shot the moon in quite a while. The goal was to get a full lunar shot with the mirrorless camera and a few close up shots with my webcam.

I was able to catch the moon in 6 individual shots with my Fuji mirrorless camera and 2x Barlow lens. Each frame is ISO 800 and a shutter speed of 1/150s. I sharpened each frame in registax with identical settings, stitched them all together in windows photo gallery, and did some final levels adjustments in darktable.

The wavelets sharpening made a huge difference pulling out the details of all the craters. Sometimes wavelets sharpening can look cartoonish, and this was an instance where a soft touch was necessary.

Next I tried a couple different zoomed in shots with the webcam, simply going by what looked most interesting. I love the deep craters and mountain ranges with the deep shadows they create.

This is Eratosthenes crater. It's 36 miles in diameter and tonight sits right near the edge of the moons dark side. Being so close to the termination means the sun is low on the horizon casting long dramatic shadows.

I love how shadowed the crater itself is while still having the central peak visible.

I took a 1 minute video with my webcam and 2x Barlow lens. The video was aligned and cropped in PIPP, stacked in autostakkert, and sharpened with wavelet filters in registax. The end result is still somewhat fuzzy but I really like the outcome. The thought of otherworldly mountain ranges really sparks the imagination.