Hi all, here my latest pan-image out of Feb. 17 session: the mare Humorum and more.

The much lower sun angle helped somewhat the processing but the tonal range balance was a pain in order to keep bright areas as not burned out and half shadowed areas not too dark.

IMAGE

As usual, make sure your browser is showing you the full res image and not the fit-to-screen version.

The mare Humorum is definitively surrounded by fractures all way around it, most are shadowed and not visible here in the image.

More to follow.
Thank you for your attention.

Hi all, from now on, I’m pleasured to share with you a wide collection of lunar seas which took the best of my patience!
For this reason, my processing was much slower than usual.
I composed 3 or 4 frames each image and often the stability varied from a stream to another getting my task even harder.

The first big portrait is with Mare Serenitatis grabbed under a very high sun angle putting on evidence any albedo marking and hundreds of craterlets spreaded all way around.
This is a 4 frames mosaic, the bottom-right frame suffered with the poorest seeing. Very disappointing indeed!

IMAGE

Make sure to view the full res version, your browser is surely downscaling the big image to match your screen resolution.

More to follow.
Thank you for your attention.

Hi all, Another “aged” lunar session from dated Feb. 17.
I was lately very busy with my ordinary job, I’m now going through my backlog of lunar images parked in my HDD.Here’s imaged the Kepler area under a low sun angle showing several domic structures all way around.
But the “pimply” area around Marius A crater (whose western rim is visible here on the left side of the image) is amazing indeed!
It looks like a downscaled version of the best known Marius hills lying westward not so far from here! The enhanced (gamma 0.7) inset image show these much better.
I wonder what those are.

IMAGE

More to follow.
Thank you for your attention.

Hi all, the last image out from Feb. 14 lunar session is for the magnificent Proclus area - one among the brightest of the Moon - grabbed under a very high sun angle.
The crater itself was log stretched to avoid an excessive ground darkening all way around it.

I’m now sure the Moon is also interesting when observed far away from the terminator.

PICTURE

A new session is yet to come.
Thank you for your attention.

Hi all, here another image from February 14th session under fair seeing and
average transparency, likely the poorest one of this session.

Just 30 frames averaged for this image with another classical lunar zone causing some excessive graining.

PICTURE

More to follow.
Thank you for your attention.

Hi all,

Here another image out from February 14 session under mainly fair seeing and average transparency.

A classical view of a well known area with the Sheepshanks rille popping up on the top-right corner.

IMAGE

More to follow.
Thank you for your attention.

Hi all,

Here another lunar image from February 14. Fair seeing and transparency.

On highlights, the nice Hyginus-like appearance owned by the crater lying aside Licetus C crater. It looks like a crater caused by a ground collapse.
Also, notice the nice difference between the Stofler rough floor and the smooth Maurolycus one.

LINK

More to follow.
Thank you for your attention.

Hi all,

After a 4,5 months dry spell caused by weather, I could capture new stuff on last February.

Fair seeing an transparency on Feb. 14 when I captured this wide lunar south pole strip starting from Moretus - filled with shadow and a dotty central peak - ending up to those unusually bright terrains placed just southward of Hagecius crater.
A favourable libration could face us craters usually seen on the limb or behind it such as (from the left to the right) Schomberger, Scott, Amundsen, Hedervari, Demonax, Hale and much more.

As note apart, I noticed an error with the Virtual Moon Atlas software placing the terminator much westward than it appears here in my image. The VMA for that date shows me Moretus crater almost fully illuminated! Can someone explain why this incongruence?

More to follow.
Thank you for your attention.

NOTE

Christian Legrand - one of the Virtual Moon Atlas author - was kind enough to clarify the “error” noticed by myself in this image.
This software, as any else lunar simulator do, is rendering the lunar surface as a perfectly flat sphere with no irregularities at all. Thus, depressions, tall mountains and crater rims aren’t taken into account to get the true terminator out as we can see at the eyepiece at a given date. The night/day border line is thus to be considered as a theorical line which might not precisely reflect reality. This is most true in the battered lunar South Pole where the ground is all but flat!
So, we should consider this as a limit of the software, not an error as I stated a while ago.

Thanks again to mr. Legrand for his clarification!

LINK

Hi all,

Find here my latest and widest shot showing the sunset on the Appennines
-from Cassini down to Eratostenes- and lot of jewels setted anywhere on
the eastern side of the mare Imbrium.
Fair seeing as always with the first two shots composed as planned, the
bottom shot with Eratostenes area was taken an half an hour later with a
fairly good seeing and added to the scene with no preliminary plan!

http://www.lazzarotti-hires.com/images/moon/eastern-imbrium20071003_lazz.jpg

Much to say and to study here!
On particular, my attention was caught by the very wide and smooth
dorsae (?) which begins from Theaetetus (the big crater south of
Cassini) and runs northward parallel to the Caucasus mountains. I never
noticed it before!

Enjoy with this 12 Mpixel sized mosaic at the full resolution, no more
image will come from me.
My HDD is now empty.

Hi all,

Second image out of the 3 composed over that session.

Given the 15 minutes recording time difference between the 2 images
(making shadows stretching in the lunar ground), the changing seeing and
the changing contrast due to the Sun rising over my site, this was all
but an easy montage!
But there is nothing better than getting rid of all such problems!

http://www.lazzarotti-hires.com/images/moon/tycho-clavius20071003_lazz.jpg

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More to follow.