My high-resolution pictures of the Moon are taken using my RC telescope. This has to be mounted on the mount in my observatory from which the west is badly obstructed by my house. I estimate that there are probably only three days a year when I have much hope of capturing the 1-day-old Moon. The 21st February 2023 was one of them. However despite the forecast of cloud only at low levels, for me there was significant high cloud at the time and the setting Sun was illuminating it so much that there was no chance of seeing a thin crescent Moon through it. Fortunately my good friend, John Leach of the Mexborough and Swinton Astronomical Society, was able to catch it ¾ hour before moonset when the Moon was a mere 5½° above the horizon. John is an accomplished photographer who has turned his attention to the Moon and is obtaining excellent pictures of the whole Moon, and he managed to tease an excellent image out of what must have been very unpromising raw data. John has very generously allowed me to use his image to complete my collection of high-resolution images. He took the pictures in colour, but the colour did absolutely nothing for the image and he rendered it into monochrome with considerable benefit. I have made very minor changes to his image to fit it into my sequence here. To illustrate just how difficult it was for John to catch this image here is a small section of the picture he took with his mobile 'phone at the same time.
Click on the picture below to see the full-sized image
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The Moon on Day 1 Day: 1.7 Date & Time: 21st February 2023, 18:30 UT Libration: latitude 5° 2', longitude 3° 34' Lunar Phase: 159.4° Colongitude: 286.2° Telescope: Olympus 300mm f/4 Pro lens at f/8 Camera: Olympus OM1 with MC-20 x2 extender Capture: 148 frames, 1/20 sec, ISO 3200 in High Speed Silent Sequential Mode Processing: 52 best images selected by PIPP, stacked in Autostakkert with drizzle ×3. Photoshop, Topaz DeNoise, and AI Sharpen Postprocessing by me for this web page: PhotoImpact: Slight reduction in size and trimmed to shape. My own software: Stretched histogram to 0-250. Focus Magic: 6 pixels. |
A picture at half size on which I have labeled the few craters I can identify is shown here*. It is instructive to work out just which part of the Moon we can see here. The colongitude tells us that the terminator is at longitude 74°E and the libration moves the Moon 3½° west, so in all 19½° of the Moon is visible. Due to foreshortening, the amount that is of the far side is very small, but the libration does move the visible craters a little more into view. The latitudinal libration moves the Moon 5° south so that rather more of the north than the south is visible, and the equator is slightly below the mid-point top-to-bottom.
*opens in a new window. Click on the picture there to see it full sized.
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