Posts Tagged Moon
Moon First Quarter – December 2025
On the night of December 29, 2025, I captured the Moon at first quarter from Concord, California. Conditions were favorable for lunar imaging, and the result is this composite assembled from three separate pictures.
Equipment & Capture Details
The image was taken using an iOptron 150mm Rumak-Maksutov telescope paired with a ZWO ASI 432MM monochrome camera. Each of the three panels was captured with 500 frames, which were then stacked and sharpened using AutoStakkert. The final composite was assembled at 02h51 UTC.
Moon pictures, and considerations about collimation…
I took a couple of pictures of the Moon with my Celestron 9″1/4 schmidt-cassegrain and was quite satisfied with the result, compared to other pictures taken later in November.
Pictures taken on 2/1/2009 by 8.30 PM PST, with Orion Startshoot solar system imager II, and processed with Registax and Painshop Pro.
Besides ok conditions, collimation made here the difference. I clearly noticed that a poor collimation combined with turbulence seems to worsen quality of images. Seeing conditions being equal – even with turbulence – a better collimation will very significantly increase the image quality.
Check the very comprehensive page of Thierry Legault on the impact of collimation on image quality.
I recently bought Bob’s knobs collimation thumbscrews, and it allows me to quickly collimate my SCT (looking in the eyepiece and at the same time moving the screws to achieve collimation…).
I looked at many threads / forum discussing laser collimation tools and it seems no collimation tool is perfect. Star collimation is quite fast with Knobs on the secondary of the SCT and allows to achieve an acceptable collimation even if seeing condition are not perfect. And the price of collimation knobs has nothing to do with pricey’s laser collimation tools…
Astrophotography in Urban Environment 