Our closest celestial companion is of course our own Moon.

On 30 June a very nice Moon could be seen during daylight. Using the SkyWatcher Esprit 150ED a short 20s session of 250 frames was recorded using 1.53ms exposures, a quarter of which was stacked using AutoStakkert4!.

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On 18 January 2024 the Moon and Jupiter came around in ecliptic conjunction. At 19:53:38UTC both objects had an ecliptic longitude of 36°10’48.5″ and the, at that moment almost straight, terminator of the Moon pointed towards Jupiter (the Moon was at that moment 57.1% illuminated). Two hours before that moment I was able to capture the at that moment not yet complete conjunction with the SkyWatcher Esprit 80ED at f/5 and with a ZWO ASI1600MM Pro Cool in one image (Jupiter with four moons can be seen all the way to the bottom left). Thanks to this conjunction we can now appreciate the difference in size between them.

The image was made with FireCapture. In 30 seconds 277 frames were recorded at a shutter speed of 1.9ms. With AutoStakkert v4.09 30% (83 frames) of this were stacked. The normal stack was used as a basis, but the four moons of Jupiter come from the sharpened stack that was made with 30% raw blend, because otherwise the moons would have remained too dark (from left to right they are Callisto, Ganymede, Io and Europa). The image shown here is a combination of the two stacks. The composition was done in PSP.

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After a month of fully overcast skies 25 November 2023 finally had a more or less clear sky over InFINNity Deck. Seeing was reasonable this day and evening and I started imaging the Moon around 22:06UTC, after having imaged by Saturn around 17:02UTC and Jupiter around 21:03UTC. Imaging was done with the SkyWatcher Esprit 150ED, ZWO EFW with ZWO LRGB filters, and ZWO ASI1600MM Pro Cool. Focussing was done visually.

Using FireCapture four LRGB-sequences of 30 seconds per filter at 12FPS were collected. This was done at unity gain, resulting in exposure times of 0.5ms for L and 1ms for RGB.

Processing was done in AutoStakkert!, stacking 75% of the L-frames and 65% for RGB, without sharpening. Postprocessing was done in PSP. The image was given 40% saturation an additional sharping.

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On 30 December 2019 there was a lovely crescent Moon. Like last time imaging was done with the Esprit 150ED in combination with the ZWO ASI1600MM Pro Cool. Focusing with SharpCap, processing and sharpening in AutoStakkert, post-processing in Paint Shop Pro (slight sharpening).

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It has been a while since I last imaged the Moon, while it is such an obvious and charming object. So on 12 December 2019 I gave it a try again. This time imaging was done with the Esprit 150ED in combination with the ZWO ASI1600MM Pro Cool. Focusing with SharpCap, processing and sharpening in AutoStakkert, post-processing in Paint Shop Pro (slight curve pulling).

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Adjacent image is a composite of two images taken with the SkyWatcher Esprit 150ED and ZWO ASI174 planetary camera. Being close-by the moon provides stunning views that change by the day due to the moving terminator (the region between day and night on the moon).

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