Lunar Photography

The earth's closest neighbor, the moon, is frequently the target of us astrophotographers.

On the evening of November 8th we had a total lunar eclipse.  That in and of itself is not unusual, but the fact that it was clear in November, now that's news!  The above photo was taken at 8:06pm from in front of Pete and Steph's house in Chesterville, Maine.  This was taken with my nikon coolpix 4500, it is a composite of two one second exposures combined in Registax.  The lens used was my f/7 80mm refractor and the camera was coupled to the end of that scope.  Totality lasted about 30 minutes.  The reddish hue is not an optical illusion, the moon really was red during this eclipse, that's caused by the refraction of light around the earth's atmosphere.

The above images were taken of the full harvest moon on September 10th, 2003.  The image on the left was taken with my brand new modified 4.5" konus reflector.  The image on the right was taken with the 12" lx200.  Both images are composites of 5 images wtaken with a Nikon Coolpix 4500 and processed in Registax.  The crater on the right is the Tycho crater.