Imaging Team Achieve World Record Image

www.lunarworldrecord.com

An incredibly ambitious project to create the largest ground-based mosaic image of the Moon, and enter the Guinness Book of Records, has finally delivered a staggering final shot.

A team of people, comprising of some of the world’s foremost astro imagers, gathered at the home of Sir Patrick Moore in April this year. Armed with a barrage of Celestron SCT scopes and Lumenera cameras they have created an image which has eclipsed any other so far taken of the Moon by ground-based astronomers.

The aim was to image the Moon at very high focal lengths using high frame-rate planetary cameras attached to numerous large amateur telescopes. Each telescope would take an image of a small section of the lunar surface at high resolution and these would be assembled, like a giant jigsaw puzzle, into a complete image of the 9-day old Moon.

The team submitted close to 1000 panes from the individual image runs, with close to 1.2 million frames of video captured, totalling 1.1 terabytes of data. These image panes were individually stitched by each team member who then submitted their region  to David Mason for final compositing into the final image. The images which make up the final master were selected based on their overall quality. A significant amount of overlap was used. In total, the image shown here utilises a total of 288 high resolution panes. The end result is a high resolution 87.4 megapixel image of the Moon, larger even then previous images taken by some of the world’s largest observatories, allowing features as small as 1km to be clearly seen.

The imaging team saw the likes of Damian Peach, Pete Lawrence, Dave Tyler, Bruce Kingsley, Nick Smith, and more, work in sync on assigned segments of the Moon from Sir Patrick Moore’s Selsey home and locations around the UK.

“This is a monumental image, worthy of the IYA, and our way of honouring Sir Patrick’s incredible work in mapping the Moon for the Russian and American Moon missions in the 1960s, on this, the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing”, says Nick Howes, who is part of the imaging team, and came up with the original plan for the record attempt. “To have secured, and been successful with such an immense pool of imaging talent for this is a real thrill, and to be allowed to attempt it from Sir Patrick’s garden only added to the excitement.

“This was a huge team effort with every single person playing a vital part”, continues Nick, “additional imaging was done by Trevor Little, with David Mason, Mark Irving and Lea Irving working on other aspects of the imaging at lower focal ratios, which provided invaluable backup to the image. Special mention must go to David Mason for his amazing work on compositing the whole lot together, as even though the team were using similar equipment, differences in seeing and camera orientation made stitching the 425MB final image in Photoshop a real challenge.”

Ninian Boyle, of Venturescope, and a regular contributor to Sky at Night Magazine, coordinated the team in Selsey on the night, and gave invaluable technical assistance throughout.

Guinness World Records will be presenting the team with their certificates in due course, along with a certificate to Sir Patrick for his world record as the longest running television presenter.

All proceeds from the use of the final image, which is already being mooted for use at various planetariums around the UK, and which will be available to view and purchase at www.lunarworldrecord.com, will be donated to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, a charity designated by Sir Patrick, with all team members contributing their time for free.

 

As part of the Apollo 11 Celebration event to be held on the 18th July 2009 from 19-00 to 23-00 hrs at Herstmonceux http://www.the-observatory.org/

Leanne Irving, Mark Irving and Trevor Little will be showing some of Sir Patrick Moore’s slide collection, this collection covers some 40 plus years of Sir Patrick’s work and travels.

This Collection has never been shown in the public domain before.

We will be in with the 36 inch Yapp and a guided tour of the Telescope will be included.

The centre charge a entrance fee but there is no charge for coming to see the collection.

If anyone requires more information please contact Herstmonceux or visit our websites.

Worthing Astronomical Society:
http://www.worthing-astronomical-society.com/

Trev, Mark, Lea.

Had an enjoyable afternoon helping Foredown Towers Astronomical group out with their open day, I took the Solarmax 60 and managed to show lot’s of interested people a few proms and some surface detail along with showing them how to capture and process some solar Avi’s into finished images.

From the Astro Chat Forum, also available on Stargazers Lounge.

Making Every Photon Count

http://astrochat.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10332

So you have decided to get into this great hobby but not sure where to start?

Not sure what’s the best equipment for your chosen field?

Looking for a local Society to join?

Want some recommendations on dealers before parting with your hard earned money?

Then why not seek out a few of the Astronomical Forums and get other peoples views.

People are only too willing to give feedback on any of the above be it good or bad.

Several Forums are available below are just a few of the UK one’s.

http://stargazerslounge.com/

http://astrochat.co.uk/forum/

http://forum.skyatnightmagazine.com/

http://www.popastro.com/phpBB2/index.php

http://ukastroimaging.co.uk/forums/index.php

Details of the new Astronomical Equipment Showroom.

http://www.telescopehouse.com/acatalog/Starborough_Farm_34__Telescope_Project.html

Some stunning imagery of Saturn from Cassini.

http://www.leenks.com/link168667.html

What a great talk by Dr Katie Joy at Worthing Astronomical Societies meeting last night, entitled The Geological History of the Moon.

At the interval the members had the chance to handle Lunar Meteorite samples.

A full report will appear in next months WAS News.

A sneaky peak at some of the data from a marathon run over the 4th/5th April 2009.

Here is part of an F/10 image with the C11.