Color contrasts in the Moon are interesting even beautiful. The following picture shows Mare Tranquillitatis area and the southern part of Mare Serenitatis in full color. It was taken 4 days after full moon. The shadows in the terminator show the orography of the landscape. Mare Tranquillitatis seems to be mainly blue. This is due to its peculiar chemical composition.
Two days after full moon Mare Crisium shows a nice landscape of mountains and shadows. Some of its inner crates are visible in this picture. The small crater Swift is on the limit of visibility. The big impact called Proclus and its rays are remarkable.
To take this image I used the Canon EOS 450d, Rebel XTI DSLR camera recording video subframes and later I stacked them up with Registax 5. Some small tweaks on Paint Shop Pro 9 and ready.
Stacked from a video under Registax 5 and stitched with Autostitch, I got yesterday this Moon mosaic. Equipment: Meade Lightbridge 16″ and Casio Exilim EX-FS10.
Tonight the Moon is crescent, and high in altitude. It is a good opportunity to record our natural satellite. Terminator is almost reaching Mare Serenitatis. Mare Nectaris (actually a gulf of Mare Tranquillitatis) is now fully illuminated and its Western border walls are clearly visible.
Silberschlag is a small Moon crater near Mare Tranquillitatis. What is my surprise when I observe that this crater shadow is proper of two peaks instead of a crater rim. Watch the picture and think about it. Is that normal?
Usually we see the Moon as in a gray scale picture, with no color details. Nevertheless the Moon has different hues depending on the chemical composition of the terrain. For example, Mare Tranquillitatis has a blue tone due to its titanium high density. Processing a Moon picture computationally, we may exaggerate its colors, giving high saturation to RGB colors. In the resulting image, Mare Tranquillitatis is the most blueish dark area. Equipment: Telescope Tanzutsu Catadioptric 114/1000.
Casio Exilim EX-Z80 is a pocket digital camera, very useful to make photos during holidays or a trip. But it may also be used to do some kind of astrophotography. Its maximum zoom is 3x magnification. Here we see a comparison of a Moon shot with 1x and 3x zoom. With 1x zoom some big maria are visible, like Tranquillitatis, and at 3x even mare Crisium is captured.
Computer Physics Lab 