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The Moon

Our own natural satellite

Total Eclipse  Video images from the total Lunar Eclipse on January 21st 2000  -   (UTC - I know that in the US it was still the 20th) .

Each image in the series above was made by combining 32 video frames , recorded on a Digital video camcorder . Images 3 through 6 were recorded using the camcorder´s "Low LUX" function .This gives more colour information in the image and is easier to process .

The weather was , much to my surprise good when I woke up to the sound of the alarm clock at 0430 local time . I saw the moonshine and started immidiately getting the video camera mounted and ready . The first images were overexposed and therefore discarded , but with some practise in setting the exposure time I finally got the images you see above .

The best of the images can be seen below :


 
All images are made with full optical zoom ( 10x ) and a teleconverter ( x2 ) of the type mounted in front of the camera objective lens .
 

 

Near mid-totality . The camera was used in the "Low LUX" mode. 32 frames were stacked the image slightly blurred followed by some unsharp masking .

 

Same as above ,  near the end of totality .
For an image processed with Registax click here

Sunshine on the edge of the Moon . The "Low LUX" function has been deactivated , giving less colour information to the image .

  Same as above , Partial phases - parts of the Moon have emerged from the Earth´s shadow . Note that you can clearly see that the Earth´s core shadow is much larger than the moon at this distance .

At this time thin clouds were drifting across the sky , so further imaging attemts were stopped here .

Webcam Images


Clavuis C8 Balcony

 ETX90 :

Plato Alpine Valley ETX90 DK 


and with the C8   :
Copernicus
 
Poor seeing

The best I could do with the available raw material (AVI file) . It will be interesting to see what can be done with the C8 , or with better seeing

:

Mare Imbrium

Mare Imbrium at sunrise
Mare Tranquilitas and surroundings
Tranquilitas

Video image of Gassendi at sunrise , C8@F10 with Astrovid2000 :
Cassendi at sunrise

Afocal Images

At a visit to my native Denmark I tried some afocal imaging of the Moon using the digital camcorder and a $100 25x50 spotting scope . Not exactly the optimum in equipment , but here are some examples of what can be done :

 Click here for a larger version of the image of the terminator .
As you can see , the brightness varies over the terminator line . I believe this is due to vignetting , and the relative movement of the camera and scope . One of the images of the mosaic is shown here for comparison :
Mare Imbrium ( or rather about half of it :-) )



Could be worse for an afocal image with a cheap 25x50mm spotting scope . The dark area in the lower right corner is due to vignetting .

Solar X-rays: status
Geomagnetic Field: kpstatus



From n3kl.org

Half a Moon (or a little less) using the C8 and an Canon EOS 20D digital SLR camera :
halfmoon

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Last update 21 January 2006 by Jan Andersen.
Background image : Video image of the Pleiades
Top caption : Lunar Eclipse 21-01-2000