any moon people out thar?

[dobsonian]

;DHello,
Afew years back I was quite interested in observing the Moon, nothing serious, just keeping an eye on the various TLP sites, and scouring the crater floors at the right illumination to see what detail I could see. Moon observing, I suppose is old hat now, but when the Moon is drowning all other objects, at least it is something to look at.
Regards,
John
PS Get a binoviewer, fitted with two 7mm Naglers and watch Copernicus when on the terminator.

[Paul Evans]

I'm a big fan of the Moon. Indeed it is responsible for my interest in astronomy which started at the time that men were going there.

I am always keen to get "different" shots of the Moon and it's surprising just how many possibilities there are - not only are there all the phases, but the libration gives different views so that sometimes the Mare Crisium is right at the edge and other times the Mare Marginis is visible - an object that is more often on the far side as viewed from Earth.

Whilst Northern Ireland isn't necessarily the best place for it, I like to see the new Moon at the earliest opportunity. This is my best so far taken on 26th June this year - the Moon at 28 hours old...



Clear skies,

Paul.

[dobsonian]

Hello Paul,
A nice shot indeed! I remember taking Moon photos about 20 years ago, using a 100mm F13 refractor, 400ASA fuijifilm and a Practika camera, in the eyepiece projection mode. I recon that I kept a Fuji film factory on overtime as most of my shots were crap, underexposed blurred due to wind shake or shutter vibration. Now and then all would come together and I would get a really nice sharp well exposed image, but not too often. Nowadays with digital photography things are somwhat easier.

Regards,
John.

[Paul Evans]

Indeed so John - not wishing to get the film/digital argument going 'cos that goes on forever, but in terms of astrophotography at least, digital works for me in three ways - you can see what you've just done and adjust there and then, you can take loads more pictures for the same amount of money, and an important one - you can shoot at ISO 3200 without having to use a whole roll of a very specialised film.

Paul.

[dobsonian]

Hello Paul,
Yes... going into film/ digital argument, my limited experience would suggest digital wins hands down, for the following reasons. No hanging around to see if you have any decent shots, no film to buy, no grainy images at high iso speeds, downloads direct to computer, also no sniggers from film processing staff. " photographing the night sky again , sir ". I found that fitting a webcam with a 7mm widefield eyepiece ( Nag ) to my 130mm refractor and set the telescope to track the moon gave spectacular large scale images on my computer 19" monitor, all from the comfort of indoors. With a frame grabber you can store individual frames or make a AVI file for later processing in registrax.
Best,
. John.

[Paul Evans]

In favour of film, though not for astrophotography, I've just received back some pictures I took on a camera that is olderthan I am - a 1957 Minolta Autocord 120 6x6 camera which I fed a roll of Fujichrome Velvia 50 through, and the results are staggering. My scanner will make 45 megapixel scans from it (135MB tiffs) and all that's wrong is the noise from the scanner.

So there are some things digital can't do better yet!

Paul.

[dobsonian]

Hello Paul,
Yes a 6x4 format camera with Fuji 50 asa would give superb results indeed. I was looking at an astro pic I took some years ago of Halley's comet,the film was that horrible Kodak VR1000, very grainy, but that was the fastest film available in 1985, camera Practica MTL5 at F1.8
Regards,
John.

[terrymoseley]

Hi,

Yes, the Moon is hard to beat for sheer impressive spectacle!

That's why I always organise our public observing events for when there's a 20% to 50% Moon in the evening sky.

That's a nice shot of a very young Moon - I have a similar one, just about an hour 'younger' - and even better, it shows the Moon closer to the Sun than Mercury in the same photo!

Terry