On Sun, 25 Apr 2004, Peter J. Alling wrote: > Not "as sharp as I would have hoped." indeed. This appears to be a very > sharp photo.
You can see a full resolution version at http://www.phred.org/~alex/pictures/moon/moon-bluesky-large.jpg It appears to me that the telescope was slightly out of focus. It could also have been a limitation of the telescope or a result of atmospheric disruptions. I haven't tried printing this yet, but I don't think that it is sharp enough for doing that. It is a good enough photo to have whetted my appetite though, and I look forward to trying more astrophotography. A friend (who was also there) has a 1200mm f4 Newtonian telescope which is very bright and sharp. We can't get the focal plane of the camera close enough to get good focus with prime focus photography, but we are working on possible solutions for that problem. That telescope would be fast enough for us to do some deeper space objects and should make focussing easier too. alex
