Best Lunar Photograph I Have Ever Seen

My friend Alan Friedman, who works from his home in downtown Buffalo,
NY, has outdone himself, I think.

Please see
http://www.avertedimagination.com/img_pages/kleine_Ina.html and
http://www.avertedimagination.com/img_pages/kleine_Ina_vertical.html.

These are the same image, the former in landscape orientation, and the
latter in traditional north-up orientation.

In my eye this photo stands alongside the Hubble Ultra Deep Field as
the most awe-inspiring astrophoto I have seen.

Note to Chris: Don't try this at home. The computers that Alan uses,
from 'scope to final image, aren't available in Colorado, anyway :-]

Davoud

--
Sell GM for scrap metal. The country will recover and be better in the long run
without an anti-technology lobby to drag us down.

usenet *at* davidillig dawt com

"Davoud" wrote in message
...
My friend Alan Friedman, who works from his home in downtown Buffalo,
NY, has outdone himself, I think.

Please see
http://www.avertedimagination.com/img_pages/kleine_Ina.html and
http://www.avertedimagination.com/img_pages/kleine_Ina_vertical.html.


They really are astounding and as good as any JAXA HD lunar orbiter
shot....but with some $10,000 worth of equipment,
what do you expect?

"Davoud" wrote in message
...
My friend Alan Friedman, who works from his home in downtown Buffalo,
NY, has outdone himself, I think.

Please see
http://www.avertedimagination.com/img_pages/kleine_Ina.html and
http://www.avertedimagination.com/img_pages/kleine_Ina_vertical.html.

Those are wonderful images, Davoud. Thanks for posting the links.

On Dec 1, 8:05*pm, "White Space Trash" wrote:

They really are astounding and as good as any JAXA HD lunar orbiter
shot....but with *some $10,000 worth of equipment,
what do you expect?

Do you suppose that anybody else with $10k could easily duplicate
these stunning images?

There are probably quite a number of amateurs who have far more
invested in this hobby. It is quite a modest sum after all. Has any
other amateur shared images of this breathtaking quality? The
rendition of surface texture and the image scale are particularly
remarkable.

They really are astounding and as good as any JAXA HD lunar orbiter
shot....but with *some $10,000 worth of equipment,
what do you expect?

*******************

$10,000 won't even buy a really good mount these days... for example,
see;

http://www.bisque.com/Products/Paramount/

\Paul A

On Mon, 1 Dec 2008 16:10:41 -0800 (PST), palsing
wrote:

$10,000 won't even buy a really good mount these days...

Fortunately, high resolution lunar imaging doesn't require exceptional
equipment. You could pull this off with a few thousand dollars. The
magic in this shot was in the image processing- what you could consider
post processed adaptive optics.
_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

palsing wrote:
$10,000 won't even buy a really good mount these days...

Chris L Peterson wrote:
Fortunately, high resolution lunar imaging doesn't require exceptional
equipment. You could pull this off with a few thousand dollars. The
magic in this shot was in the image processing- what you could consider
post processed adaptive optics.

I couldn't pull that off if I had unlimited funds. The good hardware
and software certainly make the work easier, but the skill, patience,
and dedication of the imager are critical. Alan gave a talk at the
first Macintosh Astronomy Workshop a couple of years back and, as I
understand it, he basically uses two pieces of software for camera
control and image processing--Astro IIDC http://www.outcastsoft.com/
for image acquisition and aligning and stacking; and Photoshop for the
finishing touches.

It's interesting to note that Alan collected the data in September,
2007, and released the finished mosaic just two days ago.

Davoud

--
Sell GM for scrap metal. The country will recover and be better in the long run
without an anti-technology lobby to drag us down.

usenet *at* davidillig dawt com

On Tue, 02 Dec 2008 05:24:03 GMT, Davoud wrote:

I couldn't pull that off if I had unlimited funds.

I doubt that, but you do generally make my point. This image isn't about
the hardware used, but the skill of the imager- particularly with
respect to processing.

control and image processing--Astro IIDC http://www.outcastsoft.com/
for image acquisition and aligning and stacking

Looks like an excellent tool. Nice to see Mac software starting to catch
up with Windows. Do you use this program for your imaging?

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

On Dec 1, 9:24 pm, Davoud wrote:
[...]
I couldn't pull that off if I had unlimited funds. The good hardware
and software certainly make the work easier, but the skill, patience,
and dedication of the imager are critical. Alan gave a talk at the
first Macintosh Astronomy Workshop a couple of years back and, as I
understand it, he basically uses two pieces of software for camera
control and image processing--Astro IIDC http://www.outcastsoft.com/
for image acquisition and aligning and stacking; and Photoshop for the
finishing touches.

It's interesting to note that Alan collected the data in September,
2007, and released the finished mosaic just two days ago.

Hmmm, I didn't realize Macs were that slow and difficult to use.

It's really interesting also that at the cited Astro IIDC site
they have a link to a Cloudy Nights review:

http://www.cloudynights.com/item.php?item_id=1044

where we find this:

"... but Registax is a Windows only application. Even a cursory
" survey of the astrophotography galleries on the Web will reveal
" that Registax is widely used and highly effective. Luckily for
" Mac users, Registax runs very well in Virtual PC ($229 with
" Windows XP Home Edition included).
"
" http://registax.astronomy.net/
"
" http://www.microsoft.com/mac
"
" While any of the Mac programs will allow you to select frames,
" stack them, and then enhance them, getting really good images
" seems to be just a tiny bit easier in Registax than any of the
" other programs around.

In article , Davoud wrote:
palsing wrote:
$10,000 won't even buy a really good mount these days...

Chris L Peterson wrote:
Fortunately, high resolution lunar imaging doesn't require exceptional
equipment. You could pull this off with a few thousand dollars. The
magic in this shot was in the image processing- what you could consider
post processed adaptive optics.

The 1280x960 15fps camera can't have hurt - has the image processing
managed something clever like merging optimally-sharp portions from
multiple frames? Or is 10" still small enough that the atmospheric
distortion in a lucky frame is uniform across the frame?

I'm not quite sure what the note at the bottom means; I interpret it
as eight pointings from each of which you take a thousand frames.

14.6 metre focal length onto five-micron pixels is I think (5e-6 /
14.6 * 180 / pi * 3600) 0.07 arcsec per pixel, which is substantially
oversampling the diffraction limit of a 10" mirror; about seven pixels
per kilometre on the Moon's surface! I'm not sure if the image on the
Web is at that scale.

Tom