Mars & the Moon

Looking back at my images this year I realized I hadn't photographed the moon very much. While waiting for Mars to rise the moon was sitting there beautifully and I figured it was time to get another shot.

I hadn't used the Fuji XA-2 mirrorless camera in a while but it's perfect for the moon. Combined with the 2x Barlow lens I used a 1/160 second shutter speed and ISO 800.

The moon doesn't fit in a single image so I use windows photo gallery to create a photo stitch. Some slight wavelets sharpening is done in registax and then some level adjustments in darktable completes the image.

Once I finished with the moon I was able to see Mars poking over the trees. For Mars I used a 4x Barlow setup and a ZWO ASI290MC camera. A gain of 175 and shutter speed of 25ms gave me a nice exposure.

I was stunned to see the view on my laptop screen, it was the clearest I've ever seen it. Stacking was done in autostakkert using the top 25% of frames, and finally wavelets sharpening was done in registax.