Moon 29/12/23 - Mare Crisium

[Graeme]

The shadows of the mountains to the west of Mare Crisium (Sea of Crises) are only visible for a day or so after full Moon. I needed to get an image this month on the 29th. Too early and the Sun is overhead and there are no shadows, too late and the mare moves past the terminator into Moon shadow. I realised I was running out of time for a clear sky. So I grabbed a quick 500 x 0.0001 second luminance filter sub frames.

After blinking in PixInsight to get rid of the frames where I nudged the telescope mount too much, I had to do a batch convert from .xisf to .fits. Then I analysed them and stacked the best 5% in AS4. Back to PixInsight I did a Masked Stretch, contrast S curve and TVG Denoise. I cropped the top off which was annoying, I might have another go. And the mountain shadows are not as long as they would have been later in the night. But here it is, my go at a monochrome 91.6% terminator! Mare Crisium is the sea at the north east, half in shadow.

Fits_lapl3_ap799_conv_01_EL.jpg

Higher Res

[HansV]

Well done!