Telescope: Celestron C9.25 @ f/20, Orion Atlas EQ-G

Camera: ZWO ASI294MC, Gain 300

Filter: Highpoint Scientific IR Filter

Exposure: 10min (73,200×0.008sec), saved as SER

Seeing: fair, 3/5

White Balance: Photoshop & Nebulosity Automatic

Software: Sharpcap Pro, Autostakkert, Nebulosity, Registax, Photoshop This is part of a test sequence taken during an initial evaluation of a new to me Celestron C9.25. There’s a bit of image shift and mirror flop that I need to get sorted (not unusual for a used scope) so I checked the focus and collimation on a nearby star. I used a 1.5x drizzle while stacking and combined the stacked images using 5%, 10%, 25%, and 50% of the source images to smooth out some of the pixilation. A gentle median filter in Photoshop cleaned it up nicely. The “Y” shaped near the eastern limb is the Mariner Valley. To the upper left near the sunrise terminator you can glimpse Olympus Mons as a slightly dark patch and to the lower right of Olympus lying along a diagonal line is the Tharsis Plateau with Arsia, Pavonis, and Ascraeus Mons.

Telescope: Celestron C9.25 @ f/20, Orion Atlas EQ-G

Camera: ZWO ASI294MC, Gain 285

Filter: Highpoint Scientific IR Filter

Exposure: 64×0.01sec, saved as FITS

Seeing: fair, 3/5

White Balance: Nebulosity Automatic

Software: Sharpcap Pro, Nebulosity, Registax, Photoshop

Copernicus and its rays is one of the most beautiful structures on the lunar nearside and can even be seen with the naked eye as a bright region near the center of Oceanus Procellarum. The crater is 57 miles across, but only about 2.4 miles deep, making it about the same profile as a dinner plate. High resolution images of craterlets that radiate out from Copernicus reveal fishbone-like dunes that formed from the interference pattern of shockwaves that were generated during the formation of these crater chains some 800 million years ago. You can also see terraces circling the walls of Copernicus that formed as the terrain subsided after the impact. The smooth flat floor of the crater was selected as a landing site for one of the canceled Apollo 18-20 missions.  This image is one of a set taken as part of the first-light check-out of the new to me C9.25.