HOW – at Prime Focus (camera attached directly to the telescope with a Meade adaptor). Pentax istDL SLR 6.1megapixel digital camera, Skywatcher 100mm ED (Extra Low Dispersion – Telescope lens glass with properties indicating special rare earth glass or special formulated glass that limiting or correcting of light rays passing through the lens elements to achieve all spectrum of colours to falls on the same plane of focus - especially the Red and Blue spectrum) 900mm focal length Refracting Telescope mounted on a Vixen equatorial mount. In most instances, equatorial tracking was employed to steady the Moon’s image during the exposure.
Image shows camera attached to telescope
Close-up of the camera connection
Camera adaptor shown attached to camera
WHY – The challenge! The idea of this composition just dawned on me one day late last year. I had the right photographic equipment and Photoshop 7 to get the result I wanted. Obtaining the majority of the Moon images was not a difficult task but the very last image (20) proved elusive to complete the “set”. That one actually took two months to obtain.
Planning well ahead was essential. Some of the thinner crescent phases required some degree of luck to capture because of their short visible duration. But the end result was worth the effort.
Much information can be gained from studying the images -
1. The Moons size changes over time due to its orbital motion around the Earth. When it’s nearest to us it’s called Perigee and when it’s furthest away it’s called Apogee.
2. Many of the Moons images have different colours due to atmospheric conditions and the altitude at the time the image of the Moon was taken.
3. We are able to see more than 50% of the Moon even though it shows only one side to us – this apparent oscillation is called libration.
• How many hours to produce.- approximately 30hours to obtain the actual images and more than 40hours in Photoshop computer work
• Raw completed image size in Photoshop - 765 MB
• Final jpeg image “ready for printing” size - 62MB
• Average file size of individual raw photo – 682kb
• A total of 237 images of the Moon were taken. Many of these were bracketed (changing the exposure level for successive frames, to obtain an image at the correct exposure) to obtain the best image.
