Science 5 - The Moon again

Science at Parramatta High
(5) — late 1999
The Moon

Patience please! This is a big file.

clouds over the moon - 150k!
Clouds across the moon

This movie was taken on 20/12/99, through a 300mm focal length telephoto lens attached to a webcam.
The original movie was 23 seconds long, 640x480 pix with 16M colours - a 109Mb .avi file!
It was then converted to this 3 second, 256 colour, 128x96 pixel gif.
New file size 150k. Still much too big, but more civilised.
The movement is due to the passage of the moon across the sky.
A full size single frame taken on the same occasion can be seen here.

Craters Alphonsus and Ptolemaeus. Click for more.

At left and below are three lightly processed stills taken on the same occasion. All three were originally 640x480 (resolution of the webcam) and have been reduced to a reasonable size for this page.
As you can see, the webcam at prime focus with this 'scope crops the moon pretty severely. It would take around 15 overlapping shots to cover the whole disk of the moon.
(see below)

You can click on the photos for a key to the crater names.

Craters Eudoxus and Aristotle

Crater Copernicus at sunrise,
Apennine Mountains to the left

At left is the beginning of a composite shot of the moon, using some of the images shown above (and others!)

Eventually, such montages were produced. You can view one here.

You can see the process chronicled here .

Here is a page of thumbnail images and links to more images of the moon,
courtesy of Parramatta High School.

Return to near occultations, lunar eclipse, Saturn, Jupiter, or stars.
Information about the telescope and camera used for these photos.