I struggled with the contrast of this image taken tonight using a Canon 70D attached to a Newtonian telescope. The focal length of the telescope is 1200mm at F6 (200mm aperture) with a coma corrector, which changes the effective focal length a little. Shot in the Southern hemisphere, so the Moon doesn’t get high altitude at this time of year and there is a bit more atmospheric distubance than I would like. I would be interested to see others attempts with darktable or other software.
Nice moon shot. I wonder if it might have been a tad underexposed. I applied instances of local contrast, sharpen, and diffuse or sharpen to bring out the details and then increased saturation to bring out the subtle colors.
@deekay I like your edit the best and studied you xmp files to get some new tips and tricks. I like how you used the color balance rgb module to increase chroma and bring out some of the natural but subtle colors in the moon.
Yes. A GSO 8" Dob with GSO coma corrector. The later aren’t as good as a Paracorr and they are extremely finicky on the distance from the last lens element to the focal plane but they are cheap ;). The main reason I use it is to achieve focus, as it moves the focal plane a bit further out. Otherwise I would have to move the main mirror a bit closer to the secondary, which I don’t want to do as I use it mostly visually.
Interesting. I guess even pictures taken during Apollo or with probes don’t really show its dark color due to so much direct sunlight and lack of atmosphere. For some reason I don’t remember seeing the regolith on earth or taken under different lighting conditions.
I looked on wikipedia and this pictures gives a better idea of its real color for those who were also not aware:
Apparently there’s some lightening in the surface layer due to sunlight. The astronaut’s footprints revealed darker material where disturbed. Or so I read.
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