I am posting this single shot afocal image of the moon just to illustrate what can be achieved by just postioning a digital camera in front of the eyepiece of the scope. I left the image untouched so this is the "raw" image straight from my camera.
9" homemade dobs with a 25mm Plossl eyepiece and a Fujifilm Finepix 2600 camera mounted on a homemade clamp. The camera was set on fully automatic.
Maybe you Photoshop experts would like to play around with the image to adjust the lighting, contrast, color and sharpness. I usually end up with something looking like its cast in concrete!

Attached Images

Moon_untouched.jpg (33.4 KB, 78 views)

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If at first you fail, you're running average

Heh. That's pretty nice.

Well done. Very sharp image.

Hi Phil very nice photo, crisp, sharp and clean Well done

Very nice, Phil - on my PC it's sort of glowing.

Can it be centered more in the black background? You know us rubberneckers are so picky...

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Sunset

Die Sonne scheidet hinter dem Gebirge. In alle Täler steigt der Abend nieder
mit seinen Schatten, die voll Kühlung sind.

Do an Aldrin with it: just add some black on top to make it centered. Maybe you can photoshop in the dark blue halo, so it doesn't show too clearly.

All that just to centre the moon in the cut. Because the moon itself, well, it's brilliant! Sharp and detailed combined with an excellent atmosphere of the overall picture.

Finishing off this pic will result in an extraordinary image.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Well, thanks guys for your positive comments.
The whole idea of this post was to show what can be achieved by simply taking a picture with a digital camera through the eyepiece of the scope and leave the image untouched.
What you see represents exactly what I saw through the eyepiece. Nothing more, nothing less. The glow around the moon is because it was not quite dark yet. I cannot center the image because it was not quite centered in the eyepiece.

Phil

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If at first you fail, you're running average

No, but you can "do an aldrin" and artificially center it afterwards by adding a black bar on top, optionally photoshopping it to give a better seam.

Very nice for a raw pic! I'm a fan of untouched pics. Naturally good photos. Though photoshopping can give very nice results as well.

It's as with music: I know it can give excellent results, but I have a natural reflex to keep a distance from these aids.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Here is a light (first) and heavy (second) retouched version. I'm no pro at it. In fact it's only the second time I do these things. You can see the effect of artificial centering of the moon though.

In the light version, I tried to maintain the character of the original while retouching it. In the heavy version, I did not stick to that limitation.

btw your original was quite heavily jpeg compressed. Of course that doesn't help in the retouching process. Having a more or less well calibrated monitor is of course also of importance.


light



heavy

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Thank you Nicolas. I really appreciate your input.
Maybe I could send the original to your e-mail address It is exactly as it came from my camera and you can then play around with it in Photoshop. It will not be heavily compressed.

Phil

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If at first you fail, you're running average

Thanks, but I don't have time to do the tricks again, it was just a quick test for me .

But this way you get some ideas of what is possible, and you see that an off-center framing doesn't have to be a real problem.

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Well, this may be cast in concrete, but my mental image of the Moon is concrete colored. Here is a version of your image, made in Photoshop from your jpeg.

I played with color balance and saturation, tweaked the curves, and sharpened with a hi-pass filter and unsharp mask.

--Andy

Attached Images

Moon_untouched-2.jpg (57.0 KB, 9 views)

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Observatorio de la Ballona

Thanks Andy. That looks pretty good!!

Phil

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If at first you fail, you're running average

This "untouched" moon has been touched several times now so I thought I'll also try my hand at it.
I use Microsoft Picture-It for enhancing and sharpening images. I have cleaned the result with Noiseware.

Phil

Attached Images

Moon_touched_filtered.jpg (43.1 KB, 6 views)

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If at first you fail, you're running average

Nice results! With a compressed JPG original, you should take care not to make the JPG blocks increasingly sharp as well. The trick in that case is to find an optimum between jpg artifact removal and increasing sharpness, while keeping noise low.

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The part you added on top to make the framing better, is added really well. Seamless!

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.