CCD IMAGES OF THE MOON

by

Laurie Ann Holle, Russell Plumber, David C. Schlereth and Mark G. Strobel

(Harald Schenk - Advisor)

INTRODUCTION

When using a commercial CCD camera attached to a telescope, the observer often has a small field of view. The alternative is to buy an extremely expensive camera with a large CCD array, or to attach the camera to a smaller telephoto lens. The latter will not allow you to use high magnification on celestial objects.

With our 8" Celestron, we found that the image was able to cover about 1/3 of the lunar surface. As a result, we decided to combine a series of images. These would be combined in a mosaic to make a complete image of the Moon.

Lab students with Celestron

Samples of lunar images below were taken on 07\03\06 to complete a mosaic.

Sample below is a mosaic that was made from images on 06\28\06

In general, we used an exposure time of 1/1000 of a second. The 8" Celestron was used at F/10. Images were assembled using Photoshop 7.0.