“Final” Moon Image From Last Week

My first moon mosaic attempt has been quite educational. I found that I am not setting the exposures correctly as the mosaic frame traverses from the fully illuminated part of the moon to the terminator, and I found that I need to come up with a new way of making sure that I cover the whole object with individual tiles. My previous process was rather ad-hoc, with unsurprising results:

View the 559×768 version (103 kB)

View the native 2374×3261 version (1.03 MB)

You can see the two small gaps I left, which are not fixable. The other problem–the obviously tiled appearance of the separate images–may be fixable, but I’m not going to invest the effort to try to rehabilitate this shot when it will never be print-quality. Besides, I’ve got a better idea of how to handle that problem next time. It turns out to be fairly tricky, and more than one additional attempt may be required to get it sorted out.

When is next time, you ask? Well, the United States Naval Observatory sez we’re three days past full now, which means Luna doesn’t rise until well after sunset, when I am normally thinking about other things, like sleep. The next first quarter is On October 2, and I’ll be taking the first clear, uncommitted night within a couple of days of that date to try this again. I would also like to do a mosaic of the full moon, but the next one is October 10, which is the first Friday after my wife’s birthday. Even if it’s a clear night, it would probably be a Big Mistake for me to plan to be behind a telescope then. (Using her laptop, no less!)

That brings us to November, which is also getting into Jupiter and Saturn season. Expect some serious fun then.