Stack of hi-res dSLR images of NORTH lunar pole Jan 15, recognizing polar craters under various LCROSS lighting.

[Shore Lab]

Many thanks for the posted notices, Kurt, and others.

I just posted a highly cropped Stack of hi-res images of NORTH lunar
pole, taken 10 hr after the January 15, 2009 LCROSS Unofficial
Exercise, for recognizing/mapping polar craters under various
lighting. North Pole is near max libration toward Earth (on top
crater Rozhdestevensky, unusually prominently visible here) .

File name of posted image : CKitting_200901151614StackN.jpg
Name of observer : Dr. Christopher Kitting, Cal State U. East Bay,
Email address of observer : chris....@csueastbay.edu
Aperture of telescope : 130 mm (Takahashi triplet ortho apo
refractor)
Focal length of telescope : 1000mm (plus Nikon 2x teleconverter
here).

Type of camera used : Nikon D300 DSLR (12.3MP native)
Camera detector dimensions 16mm x 24mm
Image capture software: Photoshop CS3 RAW converter to 25MP then Black
+White.
cropped drastically to 0.6 MP from RAW 25 (!) MP.
Exposure information : ~0.2 fps, 1/320 second at ISO 500.
Imaging at 2000mm focal length, f/15.
Sharpest 15 frames (of 35) stacked via “Keith’s Image Stacker” Mac
software.

(0.3 arcsec per pixel after 2x interpolation to 25MP)
Rather mild Laplacian sharpening with Keith’s Image Stacking software.
Then jpg compression for high quality 12/12 (for 300kb file).

Time and date of exposure : 1613-1614, on January 15, 2009 (UT).
(10 hr after unofficial target for N Polar imaging began on this
project.)
Observatory location: Hayward Hills, CA , 
East of San Francisco Bay.
37° 38' 48.4" N Latitude 
 122° 02' 09.4" W Longitude
Elevation: 180 m above sea level. Mediocre atmospheric stability.
and moon ~45 degrees up.
Byrd Crater in North polar region is sharper (in this targeted area
for selecting and registering stack) than single frames.

[cano...@yahoo.com]

Chris,

Thanks for your image. I have uploaded a quick hand-labeled version of
your image. What I took away from your 2009-01-15 16:13UT and Adam's
2009-01-13 04:06UT images is the central role of libration on the
visibility of polar objects. Considering the position of the
terminator in Adam's 1-13-2009 image, one would have expected the
terminator to have overrun Byrd C-D and Byrd by 1-15-2009. But
libration continues to push the apparent position of Byrd further
lunar southwest - improving the detail in the partial illumination of
Byrd. Peary is also more clearly seen in your 1-15-2009 image.
Libration at the extreme limb outruns the terminator. If you do not
want a modified version of your image posted, please let me know and
I'll detail the labeled version. - Kurt

CKitting_200901151614StackN Labelkaf.jpg

On Jan 16, 11:56 am, Shore Lab <chris.kitt...@csueastbay.edu> wrote:
> Many thanks for the posted notices, Kurt, and others.
>
> I just posted a highly cropped Stack of hi-res images of NORTH lunar
> pole, taken 10 hr after the January 15, 2009 LCROSS Unofficial
> Exercise, for recognizing/mapping polar craters under various
> lighting.  North Pole is near max libration toward Earth (on top
> crater Rozhdestevensky, unusually prominently visible here) .
>
> File name of posted image : CKitting_200901151614StackN.jpg
> Name of observer : Dr. Christopher Kitting, Cal State U. East Bay,

> Email address of observer : chris.kitt...@csueastbay.edu