It would not take much statistical analysis of my observing log to determine that I'm a fair weathered observer. The spring and fall - no bugs, slight chill in the air - are so ideal for an evening under the stars - or in tonight's case the waxing gibbous Moon.
I set the scope up and hooked up the video camera for some lunar photography. A couple days past 1st quarter brings some impressive sights to the terminator. Two of my favorites are the relatively young crater Copernicus and the large older crater Clavius. I began with the 2.5x barlow in place and focused the image that I saw on the screen, doing several runs at a high frame rate of 1/60th per second. Then I ended with a few runs without the Barlow.
Copernicus
When I went inside and began the processing I was disappointed to find that the higher power images were a bit mushy - either I misjudged the focus and was just outside of it or the seeing was not that steady (but that is unlikely that I could not get 100 or so good images out of some 3,000 frames that each run encompassed). Fortunately the videos without the Barlow appeared much crisper and are presented here.
Clavius (large crater at lower mid-right of image)
Fact Sheet
Sep 14 2013 at 21:30 EDTTowson, MD USA
6" f/8 Newtonian
DFK 21AU04S Camera
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