September 15, 2009
An Excess of Phases?
images by Robert Reeves, San Antonio, TX
I have gathered 13 of my prime focus full Moon disk images in one montage as shown in the "thumbnail" above,
if you can call a 4100-pixel wide image a thumbnail. This is just about a 1/10th scale preview for the actual full
size image that is on my web server. The 7-mega-byte full size image is 31,000 pixels across and is a collection
of 13 phases of the Moon shot over the past four years with either a ToUcam, Atik2HS, or a DMK41 on a 34-year
old Celestron-8. The images with the Atik and DMK have been downscaled to approximate the size of the original
ToUcam images, which is just under 3000 pixels across the face of the Moon. The one image taken last month with
the 10-inch scope was downsized by half to scale properly with the earlier images. That particular shot, taken on
9 August, 2009, is a mosaic of 44 separate 1000-frame videos. The other images range from eight videos of 600
frames for the thin crescents up to 32 separate 600-frame videos for the larger phases. The entire montage was
created from a total of 180,000 video frames and enough RegiStax processing time to nearly melt my processor.
The different phases readily show how variable the seeing is here in San Antonio, often radically changing halfway
through an evening's mosaic sequence. But the object of the whole excercise was to allow a look at surface features
under varrying sun evelations and I think it does that quite well. Sadly, my plan to print it as a photo banner will not
work because my Epson printer has a 44-inch length limit for banners and this image is 8 1/5 feet long!
Robert Reeves
Related Links
Robert's Celestial Web site
Yesterday's LPOD: 24 Blätter
Tomorrow's LPOD: Flat Enough To Sit On a Table
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