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Actually the astronomy club did that one at a large observatory in Colorado... re-thinking back on it, I stand corrected on the 16" scope... that particular scope was used on a different moon shot and also by me to photograph Comet Hale-Bopp (twin tails). The photo was enhanced and I believe they even magnified it digitally since it looks like something you'd expect from a fly-by of a space probe! Tycho is about 85 km across and 4km deep... it's a seriously big crater, one that would extinguish life on earth!! They've had it published along with some other really nice photos of celestial objects. The first two pics are strictly my efforts. I've been lazy this whole summer regarding astronomy and have been using my small 3" refractor at home. A real POS compared to the professional optics. I was thinking of making the trip to the observatory and use the 7" APO last night on the full moon but later on, light clouds kept creeping in and out.Ron H said:
Actually, from what I read, Tycho is the big crater near the top of your picture which has the rays emanating from it (See the Wikipedia reference below).HiTech said:
Ron H said:
I think you're correct. What threw me off was the position of Tycho (not to mention the fact that I'm not an astronomer). How did you get Tycho at that oblique angle? In every other picture of it that I can find, it is not near the moon's limb. I thought the view of the moon was essentially the same from any place on earth. That picture looks like it was taken from a spacecraft, maybe?HiTech said:
You are speaking of the two top photos I took? Honestly, it's just the moon floating in space according to "celestial physics". I simply opened up the observatory doors, positioned the scope and turned on the camera! In fact it was about last year at this time (mid August) that I took them, so last night's full moon may show the same through binocs. I think I will break out the small telescope tonight if skies remain clear to confirm it. I'd have to ask an astronomy professor to confirm if that low crater is indeed Tycho.... I based my info. from a moon map. If it's the up-close bottom photo you are questioning about, then yes, I too believe it's spacecraft based and here I assumed the students took it while in Colorado. Some of those large optic scopes can take some pretty impressive images.Ron H said:
Boy oh boy, you had me looking at a moon map trying to figure it out and what surprises me is how identical things look between the northern and southern lunar hemispheres. I'm going to mention this to an astronomy prof next time I run across him. Now that we've seemed to put this issue to bed, how about I post a close-up photo of a black hole galaxy I located that's approx. 800 trillion lightyears away?
