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.