High Resolution Lunar Mosaic

I did a quick imaging work in Christmas Eve because I needed to rush home for dinner. The seeing was 5/10 and the transparency was 4/10. Originally I want to shoot both Jupiter and moon. However I didn’t make it for the Jupiter. I used the Equinox 120ED and the 5X Powermate for the Jupiter imaging. The effective focal length was 4500mm. It was just too difficult for me to get the image on the DBK21 CCD. I tried for an hour and finally I gave up and switched fast to the moon. It was a good exercise for me to shoot the moon in high magnification. I used the Equinox 120ED and 2.5X Powermate. The effective focal length was 2250mm. It was longer than the focal length of C8. In order to save my work, I intentionally used more margins. I don’t want to ruin the whole image by miss a small parts of the moon. The final mosaic is a composition of 22 photos. I found it was difficult to make the sharpness uniform in all 22 photos. The underlining key is the selection of alignment points, not the number of alignment points and the wavelet. After process the image for more than 15 hours, I gave up! This is the result.

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http://wphoto.myvnc.com/24-12-2009_original.jpg

http://wphoto.myvnc.com/24-12-2009_original_bg_rotate.jpg

Moon age 7.9, Equinox 120ED, EQ3Pro, DMK41, Registax 5, PS CS4

Filled background and rotation applied

My Dark Age

Despite the recent cloudy weather in Hong Kong, the weather seems going to be good in the Christmas holiday. I wish clear skies are waiting for me! However, I was totally down today! I went to the Lion Rock Mountain today with the Hiking Club members. Apart from the foggy weather, it was cold and dry. It was good for hiking! However it was my fate too! When we walked for an hour, I needed to check the map to make sure that we were in the right trail. As I needed to find the map from my backpack, I asked one of my students to hold my camera for me. While I was reading the map, he suddenly dropped my camera! Good grief! My D80 and 18-200mm VR were gone! I guessed the D80 would be totally lost! I am not sure about the 18-200mm VR. It needs optical alignment for sure. Anyway, I need to bring them to Nikon and see if they can be recovered. They are now in Intensive Critical Unit, ICU! I told my student that this accident can be fixed by money. I will pay for my beloved camera and lens. But some accidents in physics lab would not be fixed by money, perhaps fatal or irreversible! One must be very careful in handling equipment. Anyway, this is not the end of the story. When we almost finished the hike, I wristed my two ankles 拗柴! It was the first time I hurt both ankles simultaneously! In fact I haven’t seen any people hurt their two angles at the same time! Poor me! I wish I can recover quickly. Otherwise it will ruin my Christmas holiday completely! No stargazing!!!

My two ankles were wristed!

My D80 was seriously damaged! See the gap between the lens and the body. This part is supposed to be very tough! But cracked now!!!

These are the bits and pieces from the inner part of D80 and battery compartment. In fact some parts are missing!