After finishing capturing the sun this afternoon, I put the ASI178MC on the scope hoping that I would be able to image the moon after dark.

Looking out the window at 1950, I could see lots of high thin clouds. I had no expectation that this situation was going to get any better. Sunset was at 1806, and I headed outside at 1810 to see if I could get the moon nudged onto the sensor display, and the clouds were already gone. I found the moon already on the display. After setting up the exposure and framing in Firecapture, I was imaging by 1820. After that I put the camera in the cottage and was back in the house before 1830.

The temperature was 51 degrees, and although it was not nearly as comfortable as my earlier session, it was still pleasant to be outside without the temperature being brutally cold. There was an occasional light breeze, but nothing that would interfere with imaging.

I have gotten away with capturing the moon at dusk in the past, but I didn’t get away with it this time. Even at 18 minutes after sunset, the moon looks contrasty and the sky looks black in the unprocessed image on the display. The blues wanted to come out, so it was difficult to make the sky appear black without harming the moon itself. I also think that the moon might be a little less contrasty than it could be as a result of the bright sky. I think I did not get away with it this time because I am processing better.

I noticed that the gold-rimmed crater effect that I have experienced in the past with the ASI178 was visible on the display. I had only noticed in final images in the past. The gold effect did not seem to appear in this final image, but I did not process that hard. Something to keep an eye on.

I captured the entire crescent in five separate panels. Each capture was 500 frames in fire capture. Exposure and gain were 9.3ms and 312db respectively. The best 75% of the frames were stacked in Autostakkert!, and wavelet sharpened in Registax. The panels were stitched together and the image was finished in Photoshop. This image is posted on flickr.

The planetary setup with the flip mirror was on the back of the NP101. The photographic path had the 2.5x Powermate and the ASI178MC camera.

The only follow up issue that I noted is that I need to offload some files onto the external drive before I run out of capture space on the laptop.