Quarter  80 degrees South.  Images derived from ldem_80s_80m.jp2 produced by the LOLA science team.

New Moon

Quarter

Full Moon

South Pole of the Moon.  100 pixel per degree data (300 meter per pixel).  Shackleton is illuminated arc near the center of the image.  Malapert is on the horizon at the left.  Sun at 0 degrees.

Camera closer to the surface looking in the same direction, from the farside to the earthside.

Same camera angle as above, sun over the Pole.

Four megapixel model of the North Pole of the Moon; 80 degrees north.  This is zoomed in closer than 85 degrees north, viewed from directly overhead.  Sun at zero degrees, or just at the horizon at the pole, which is near the illuminated crescent left of center.

Two weeks later.

Reinhold crater at dawn.  Produced from ldem_64.jp2 produced by the LOLA science team.

Reinhold at dusk.

Sun a couple of degrees lower.

Eratosthenes Crater near dusk seen over Sinus Aestuum.

Dawn over Eratosthenes.  All images generated from ldem_64, a 50% reduction of ldem_128 produced by the LOLA science team.  Data converted to stl with Mathematica, composition and imaging using Blender.

Copernicus in the distance, Eratosthenes in the foreground, Stadius centered. From a 30 degree square selection from  ldem_32, a 32 pixel-per-degree digital elevation model of the moon produced by the LOLA science team.  STL file produced in Mathematica, lit by low sun in Blender.

Eratosthenes and Montes Apenninus in the distance, Stadius to the right with a higher sun.  To the right of Eratosthenes beyond Stadius is Sinus Aestuum.

A meshlab view of a 4-megapixel version of the same area imaged above.  From an ldem_64 height map of the Moon, reduced from the ldem_128 produced by the LOLA science team.

From May 30, 2009.  Imaging Source firewire color camera 1280×960 f/15 prime focus.  Astro IIDC software used to capture.   Stacked 2012 with Registax 6 using 1000 alignment points.  Original found here.  Again about 200 of 300 stacked.

Text from 2009:  South East sector with Mare Smythii on eastern limb.  Both images scaled 50% from originals taken with Imaging Source 1280×960 color camera.  Green channel only, captured on macintosh with AIIDC, .mov transferred to pc and converted to .avi, stacked in Registax and touched up with Photoshop.  About 200 of 300 frames stacked.  The moon was only ten degrees above an apartment building, so seeing was very bad, although the night was clear.  Still, the image with the six Marias (Nectaris, Tranquilitatis, Fecundatatis, Spumans, Undarum, and Smythii) I rate as about the best I’ve done.  Click to open full-size in a new window.

From November, 2009.  Tycho at prime focus f/15.  This was captured as a quicktime movie with AstroIIDC and a Point Grey Scorpion monochrome CCD camera.  Converted to .avi, moved from mac to pc to process with Registax 6.  200 best frames of 449.  1799 alignment points.  I have a new laptop dual-core2, SSD, 8Gb ram.  While it took three attempts to get an image I liked, stacking 1800 alignment points took three minutes; a half-hour total with final touches in Gimp 2.

From 2009 posting:  Shot at f/15, 449 frames 339 stacked:  95% quality.  This is a crop from a 1.4Mp image, but wordpress reduced it about 50%.  The best of the week:  about an hour of computer time processing. (24 alignment points, create reference frame, sharpen, continue, optimize, stack, sharpen.)  No processing in Photoshop except cropping and conversion to jpeg.

New Registax, new computer combined to halve the processing time for a better result with the same degree of fussiness.  Moore’s law applied to astrophotography.

Nectaris basin generated from 32 pixel per degree lunar digital elevation model produced by the LRO science team with Mathematica and Blender.

Image captured April 2010 with ETX-125 f/15 telescope and Point Grey Scorpion CCD camera.

An attempt to match the photo with a procedural texture for the surface lit by a sun.

A portion of the Moon with Mare Orientale uppermost derived from the file ldem_32.jp2 produced by the LRO LOLA science team.  Imported into Blender 3D and animating the Sun.  4 seconds.