Ptolemaeus Home

Move your mouse over the picture to see the names of the various features.

Here I present two pictures of the same area for the sake of the technically minded to illustrate the effects of gamma during capture.  The upper picture was taken with a high gamma, the lower with a low gamma.  You can see how the low gamma has brought out the detail in the maria on the left of the picture and the high gamma picture has brought out tht details in the craters on the right.  In particular, the high-gamma picture reveals the beautifully pointed shadow of the central peak in Albetagnius.
These are wide-angled views taken with a 0.33 focal reducer attached to my LX200 and show the lovely grouping of five large craters on the right and the northern part of the Mare Nubium on the left.
The pictures were taken with my LX200 on 14th October 2006, when the Moon was 22.3 days old.

Upper picture:
Date and Time: 14th October 2006 03:11 UT
Camera: ToUcam 740K
Telescope: LX200
Capture: K3CCDTools. High gamma, 1/250", 22% gain, 622 frames
Processing: Registax. 433 frames stacked. Wavelet 1-2 = 10, histogram 0-200

Lower picture:
Date and Time: 14th October 2006 03:15 UT
Camera: ToUcam 740K
Telescope: LX200
Capture: K3CCDTools. Low gamma, 1/100" 15% gain, 609 frames
Processing: Registax. 531 frames stacked. Wavelet 1-2 = 10
Pitatus Ptolemaeus (100 Km in diameter) has a remarkably flat floor and no central mountain, situated in a very rugged part of the lunar surface. Nevertheless it is believed to be about 4,000 million years old. Albategnius (139 Km in diameter), however, is only 3,900 million years old, along with Alphonsus (121 Km in diameter). Arzachel (100 Km in diameter) is slightly younger at 3,800 million years.
The picture was taken with my LX200 on 17th October 2003 at 02:20 UT when the Moon was 20.8 days old.

Date and Time: 17th October 2003 02:20 UT
Camera: ToUcam 740K
Telescope: LX200
Capture: K3CCDTools. 50% gamma, 1/50", 20% gain, 314 frames
Processing: Registax. 246 frames stacked. Wavelet 1,2,6 = 5
And here is a close-up picture of Ptolemaeus under similar lighting.  Its walls rise to over 2000 metres above the floor which is relatively smooth.  The small crater within it, which I have labelled 'A' after Hatfield, is called Ammonius in the VMA.
The picture was taken with a ToUcam attached to my LX200 with a X2 adaptor lens on 6th September 2004 when the Moon was 21.8 days old.

Date and Time: 6th September 2004 04:35 UT
Camera: ToUcam 740K
Telescope: LX200 with X2 lens
Capture: K3CCDTools. High gamma, 1/50", 31% gain, 307 frames
Processing: Registax. 140 frames stacked. Wavelet 1,2 = 10
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