luna...

March, week four:
I was able to borrow a telescope from my friend James, and after a bit of fiddling got my camera hooked up. It was a clear night out and there was a great view of the moon. I had first tried this setup two days previously with some decent preliminary results, although I think the images were slightly overexposed (at 1/50 sec!). I think it was Ansel Adams who reminded people that the moon is a sun-lit subject, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when it came out better with 1/125 exposure. Seems strange to be using such fast shutter speeds in the middle of the night, but it's hard to argue with the results.

My biggest problem was probably focus, since I'm not used to manual focus, and I was pretty much laying on my back looking at an angle, propping myself up with one hand and adjusting the focus with the other. This was complicated by having to chase the moon, which at this stage (waxing gibbous at approximately 90% full) could barely fit in the field of view. That meant that if everything was aligned perfectly, I would have about 5 seconds of the moon passing through where I could image it in its entirety. What I did was move the telescope to where the moon was half-in the image and then focus. Once it was about to be in the image completely, I took several shots until it had passed through. Then I checked the exposure and focus on the camera's LCD, and started over. Each time I think the focus got slightly better. After two or three of these passes, I loaded the images onto my computer to evaluate more carefully, and then try a couple more sets. An experience like this this helped me realize the real benefits of tethered shooting, not to mention the live-view feature that is available on the Canon 1D-Mark III and the EOS 20Da.

Overall, I'm very excited by the results (although admittedly the black-and-white conversion process wasn't very complicated for this image). After playing around with lunar shots some more, I'm gonna try some planetary imaging, followed by (hopefully) some stars and neublae (however those may be better in color :-)

Image details:
Date and location: 3/30/7 at 01:41 EDT, my balcony, Charlottesville, VA
Equipment: Canon 30D, Celestron NexStar 6" Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope (f/10.0, approx 1500mm), Celestron T-adapter, T-Mount for Canon EOS
Settings: manual focus, telescope on tripod, shutter release, ISO 100, 1/125 sec, shot in raw
Processing: raw conversion in Aperture v1.5.2 -> export as .jpg -> USM (200%, 3.0, 0) -> resize -> USM (200%, 0.5, 0) -> channel mixer monochrome (0, 0, 100%, 0) -> crop -> text -> save for web 100%
Photo-a-week goals addressed: #1 (b+w), #7 (night photography), #8 (astrophotography)