Plato

Moving north here is a nice wide angle shot of Plato and its surroundings:

A close-up really shows the rugged terrain and the shadows cast across the crater floor:

Displaying this alongside a previous image of a waxing Moon gives a good feel for the undulations on both sides of the crater rim.

Tycho

Here's another pair of pictures of one of the Moon's more prominent craters - this time Tycho. My previous attempt at this target is here and is a little blurry. These are better but still a bit off.

Clavius and Maginus are the two larger craters towards the bottom right. As this close-up shows, Tycho isn't the most spectacular of craters.

However it does give a good feel for the depth of the crater, particularly when compared to the length of shadow in Sasserides to the north

Copernicus

And now a close-up of Copernicus, which I'm posting second because I'm rather pleased with this one:

Really this should be rotated about 90 degrees anti-clockwise but for some reason it looks better this way up. This is undoubtedly one of my best pictures so far - it is sharp, detailed and has a good amount of shadow. My only previous close-up attempt at Copernicus was hampered by hazy skies but this picture would have improved any of my earlier efforts.

Eratosthenes

Following on from the previous post, here is a closer look at Eratosthenes:

I'm fairly pleased with this picture but I think I could have achieved slightly sharper focus. Nevertheless, it is a big improvement on my previous attempt with the 2x Barlow.

Copernicus and Eratosthenes

Another couple of old favourites but whereas I'd previously always photographed them individually this time I've got them in the same shot.

They're a good distance from the terminator and this highlights the detail without swamping them in shadow. I have a couple of close-ups that will follow shortly.

Venus

Although it is nice and quiet at three in the morning, my early observing session wasn't entirely motivated by the relaxed ambiance. Not only is my photo collection dominated by images of a waxing Moon, but I was also without any pictures of Venus. As many people know, Venus is a planet that is very easy to find (because it's the brightest object in the sky barring the Sun and Moon) but it's only visible near to sunrise and sunset (because it's relatively close to the Sun). Sunset presents a problem for me since my house sits between my telescope and the western horizon. So if I want to observe Venus I need to be outside just before morning twilight.

Although the picture below isn't all that thrilling it does illustrate something that a lot of people don't know, probably because they've never really thought about it - Venus has phases similarly to the Moon.

A new cycle of phases begins everytime Venus passes (or under-takes) the Earth in its orbit, which is roughly 584 days. Much more frequent than how often I can be bothered to get up at three in the morning to look at it.

Clavius

After a very busy six months followed by three months of almost non-stop rain I'm back behind the eyepiece/webcam. Thursday night was exceptionally clear and relatively still so I have some good new material for the blog, starting with Clavius which I first observed nearly two years ago.

I think these new images are a big improvement both in picture quality and the observing angle.

And with the 2x Barlow...

I couldn't get my usual image processing technique to work on the higher magnification image but even the cut-down processing has produced good results. When I have some spare time I may try to make the processing a little more rigorous.

The observant (or those who keep track of the phases of the Moon) will notice that this image is of a waning Moon, so the shadows are on the opposite side to those in the image of a waxing Moon from two years ago. The even more observant will realise that this means some rather unsociable hours of observing - the video for the first image was completed at 3:18am and the second at 3:54am. It's nice and peaceful at three in the morning.