Moon, Mare Imbrium
Posted: 13 September 2013
The observatory was opened Thursday, 12 September 2013, at 1824 MST, 96°F. The sky was partly cloudy. At 1831 MST, viewed Venus, 83X. I then went to the moon, just past First Quarter and viewed it at 83X and 222X. Sunset was at 1836 MST. No "green flash" seen this night (it was seen on the previous night). I did some lunar terminator observing, 222X, for a few minutes. Seeing was not very good.
I then mounted the D7000 DSLR at prime focus on the 8" LX200-ACF using the 2" visual back + star diagonal. I initially used the visual back with its extension, but removed the extension to get the entire visible moon in the camera field-of-view. Without the extension, the magnification is slightly reduced. This is a 1/200sec, ISO 400, image taken at 1850 MST:
Since seeing was not very good I did not do any high magnification imaging of the moon. However, the mountains around Mare Imbrium on the terminator were impressive. This image was cropped from the full size version of the above image:
I also did a HD video recording of the moon, 1/400sec, ISO 400. 121 frames from the video were stacked using Keith's Image Stacker. This is the resulting image:
I resumed lunar terminator observing, 222X, at 1857 MST. Again, used the visual back without its extension. I have decided to keep using the visual back without the extension as that provides a better full lunar disk view with the 2" 24mm UWA eyepiece (83X). Clouds were now in much of the eastern half of the sky. By 1903 MST, clouds were approaching the moon from the east.
Slewed to Saturn, low in the southwest. Although Saturn was too low for good viewing, Titan was visible at 222X. Due to the clouds, I then began closing up for the night.
The observatory was closed at 1914 MST, 82°F.
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