Gibbous Moon, October 4, 2014 

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October 4, 2014; SkyNews Magazine Photo of the Week, Dec. 19, 2014; Astronomy.com Astronomy.com Photo of the Day August 19, 2015

I rarely image the moon in summer, because it is low in the sky all night.  But in the fall it rises higher, where the air is steadier.  Last night was cloudy and hazy and there was a  gibbous moon up, so I wasn’t able to do any deep sky imaging.  However, I did manage to image the moon between clouds.

Autumn is definitely here.  We’ve had some warm days, but last night it was chilly, windy and the sound of the leaves blowing around the driveway made me shiver and put on another layer. 

Tekkies:
SBIG STL-11000M camera, Baader R filter, 10″ f/6.8 ASA astrograph, Paramount MX.  No guiding.  Acquisition with TheSkyX.  Focusing with FocusMax.  Calibration, registration and integration all done using Maxim-DL.  All other processing in PixInsight.  Shot from my SkyShed in Guelph, Ontario. Average seeing and below average transparency.

16x10msec R (total=160ms).

The light frames were calibrated, aligned and stacked in MaximDL and exported to a fit file that was opened in PixInsight.  It was processed with RestorationFilter (so THAT’s what it’s for!), MultiscaleMedianTransform for selective sharpening and noise reduction.  HDRMultiscale transform was used to get detail from bright areas, followed by LocalHistogramEqualization to boost contrast (with brightest areas protected with a mask).  UnsharpMask was applied at 0.9 and 1.5 pixel scales using a mask to protect brightest and darkest areas.  TGVNoise was applied and a final contrast adjustment was applied.  Image scale is about 1.1 arc sec per pixel.