Lunar Images - 11 July 2003
NexStar 11 GPS All images where taken with the camera handheld to the eyepiece. Focusing on the FinePix is electronic auto-focus which meant that I needed to depress the shutter button half-way to lock the auto-focus and then adjust focus on the telescope until the image was a sharp as possible on the LCD panel of the camera. I also adjusted on the camera for f/2.8 and then the camera selected the shutter speed for the exposure - this ranged from 1/18th to 1/75th of a second depending upon the composition of the view. The camera was zoomed to its maximum setting (18x). There was a great deal of haze in the air (very high humidity) so the contrast is a little lower than expected and the shaky support provided by a handheld snapshot and the difficulties noted above with focusing also robbed some detail. In short, I wouldn't recommend this camera for afocal astrophotography. Despite all this, the large aperture of the N11 provided a great amount of detail. All features were identified in the Virtual Moon Atlas. Area around crater J. Herschel (faint-walled crater on
the left)
Area around crater Gassendi (the crater on the left
with the central peaks)
Area around craters Aristarchus and Herodotus
(the two craters at the bottom, Aristarchus
Area around crater Mersenius (center). This area
is found just to the west
Area around the crater Schiller (large oblong crater
just below the center). |
