2015 Jan. 30 ~ The Waxing Gibbous Moon

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Photographed from mid-town Toronto, Canada

(-14 degrees C.)

 

Four days before it reached its full phase, the Moon was riding high in the cold night sky over Toronto. I put the telescope outside for two hours to let it cool down to ambient temperature before starting to photograph.

 

This time I decided to try something new: using different exposures for different parts of the lunar disk, since there is a significant brightness gradient from the darker left side to the brighter right side. I combined all of them into one image that I think preserves the bright detail at the terminator that I often lose when shooting just one exposure for the entire disk.

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Nikon D810 camera body on Explore Scientific 152 mm (6") apochromatic refracting telescope, on Sky-Watcher AZ-EQ6 SynScan mount

 

Three sets of six stacked frames each :

 

** terminator portion of the Moon: each frame ISO 25,

1/50 sec. exposure at f/8

** middle portion of the Moon: each frame ISO 25,

1/100 sec. exposure at f/8

** right side of the Moon: each frame ISO 25,

1/160 sec. exposure at f/8

 

Individual frames stacked in Registax 6 (www.astronomie.be/registax/)

 

Final image processed in Photoshop CS6

(brightness, contrast, colour saturation, sharpening)

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Done