Science at Parramatta High
— October 7 2000 —
 How this photo of the moon was created
moon, 9 days old- 7/10/2000 - 120mm f8 refractor Well... "what's all the fuss?" I hear you cry.
"It's just a photo of the moon."

Yes and No.

It's actually a montage of 15 shots.
This photo began its life as a number of AVI movie clips taken with the webcam mounted at the prime focus of a 120mm f8 refractor.

These movies were deliberately tracked so that all of the moon's visible surface was covered.

 

More below...
Every frame from the AVI clips (hundreds!) was examined.

Those exhibiting poor seeing were rejected.

Sufficient single frames were saved to construct an overlapping complete picture of the moon just past first quarter.

 

More below...
The initial montage looked as at left.

(Phew!)

Each frame was carefully positioned to overlap the others as accurately as possible.
Brightness and contrast levels were then matched.
Lines and artefacts at the borders were erased (mostly!)

The resultant montage was then flattened; brighteness and contrast optimised; resized to suit the individual purpose(s); digitally sharpened (to reduce the dithering effect of resizing) then saved as the compressed JPG file you see above.

The final montage is 1276x1700 pixels. If you'd really like to see it, an 82k version of it is here

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