Playing on the moon

Twas a clear night, but with a high mist. The mist did interfere a little, but it sure helped with the seeing... I got out for some imaging... But first, a single shot with the 450d 2xTC, the C80ED on a camera tripod.



A little later, all done, I got the kit out... The Skymax 102 with the QHY5v on the HEQ5. Using a gamepad via EQMOD to control it all (that makes life so much easier). I setup with the 2x barlow to capture a mosaic of the disk. Here's a couple of frames from the total..

Clavius


Copernicus


The full mosaic. 93 panes of 350 frames in each AVI, processed in Registax 5, merged in Imerge and tweaked in GIMP.



Click for the full size version.

I then setup with the 5x barlow for a little play, the intent being to try and image Mars. It's really hard to use, and focusing is a total mare... anyway...

Gassendi



My attempts at Mars then failed completely... I couldn't find Mars, I spend some 20 minutes trying too. It wasn't that I couldn't see Mars, I could, but the very narrow FOV was just too small, then I ran out of power, and I and all my equipment needed to defrost. So it wasn't to be. Hopefully there'll be another clear night over the next week and I can have another bash at Mars.