GUEST MOON ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY Last updated: 31 July 2007

Some LXD55 users have sent me examples of their astrophotography. If you have some examples you would like included here please send me a description of how you made the astrophotos and a copy of the images as GIF or JPEG files (due to internet email gateway issues, please send only one image file per message or ZIP or Stuff multiple files). Send to mweasner@optcorp.com. Alternatively, if you have created your own web page with your examples please let me know and I'll include a link to your site.

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Submitted by: Steve (bullfox@comcast.net) [31 Jul 07]
I took this 07-28-07 at Del Valle park just out side of Livermore in Northern California. It was taken with a Mead DSI II color camera through a Williams 110 mm Megrez apo doublet on an LXD75 mount. It is one image at .04 seconds. It has been sharpened, gamma corrected and touched up. I also changed the aspect ratio because the atmosphere so elongated the moon that it appeared egg shaped.
Submitted by: Niall J. Saunders (niall@njs101.com) [9 Feb 07]
It was taken with my Olympus E-Volt E-500 DSLR, attached directly with a T-mount adaptor, to a Moonfish ED80 refractor, mounted on our LXD55 dovetail (the 8" SCT OTA having just too long a focal length to let us capture the conjunction). The original images were taken a 8Mp resolution, and Saturn was enhanced using some localised stretching in Corel Paint. Once that part of the image had usable pixels, an overall histogram adjust was used to tone down the moon. Thereafter I cropped and resized to give you a more useable 640x480 image. The one I am using as desktop wallpaper is unscaled at 1650 x 1080 (I'll send that if you want it). We were fighting with thin alto-cirrus at the early part of the conjunction - this image was taken at around 0100 GMT during a break in the cloud layer. It wasn't an occultation, but it was fascinating. Even through the DSLR viewfinder the spectacle of both Saturn and the Moon was stunning - images that I will treasure. Cheers from here - where snow is supposedly imminent !!

Go to the 2006 Guest Moon Astrophotography Page.

Go to the 2005 Guest Moon Astrophotography Page.

Go to the 2004 Guest Moon Astrophotography Page.

Go to the 2003 Guest Moon Astrophotography Page.

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