This is really sad January for any amateur astronomer in my area. Out of 25 days of this month, we had just 2 partially clear nights so far. Since I can't take any new photos I thought that I would share with you my most favorite picture of the moon. I took it about 4 months ago and I'm really proud of it.
I knew I could get big magnification if I use my ZWO ASI178MC with my Celestron Nexstar 127 SLT and I did share some of those images on my Instagram account but I never had time to take enough pictures to make a mosaic.
I remember sitting on the balcony with already mentioned setup and shooting video after video. I took 12 videos in full resolution of the camera so 6.4Mpx and each containing about 800 frames. Those videos were not compressed so the size of those files was around 350GB. Then I did the routine of running the videos through Autostakkert 2 and through Registax 6. The final stitching was done in Photoshop where I had some trouble so I had to stitch it manually.
There are some imperfections in the close-up, some craters are not perfectly aligned but overall result is satisfying enough for me. I'm planning on re-doing it in the summer on my CG5 mount which is sturdy and can track a lot better and with my newly purchased Barlow 3x which I haven't had a chance to try yet.
What I like about the picture the most is that when you enhance the saturation, the Moon becomes so colorful. It shows how different areas have different composition, how to material was ejected from impacts. It's simply beautiful.
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