First Moon Shots for 2009

While the seeing was pretty ordinary last night (a lot of moisture in the atmosphere!), I dragged the LX200 to the front driveway and took some snaps. My wedge is in a state of disrepair (waiting for a new part) so I removed it from the tripod and set up the scope in alt-az mode. It had been a while since I have had the scope configured this way, but I enjoyed the ease of the setup and was up and running on no time. I am happy to report that tracking was fine, no issues with drive runaway or anything else unusual. Phew!

So, firstly I took a shot of the big gibbous moon with my Nikon D40. Shot is below.

Image Details:

• Meade LX200 8" F6.3
• Nikon D40
• Alt-Az Alignment
• 1/125 second exposure
• Mild sharpening, saturation and curve adjustment in Photoshop
  

Then I attached my SPC900NC webcam to the scope. I have not done this for such a long time as I have been focusing on DSLR astrophotography. Anyway, I centered on the Calvius region and below is the eventual shot. Again, bad seeing cut down on the detail a fair bit.

Image Details:

• Meade LX200 8" F6.3
• Philips SPC900NC
• Alt-Az Alignment
• 408 of 2000 frames, 15FPS
• Acquired in K3CCDTools
• Stacked in Registax