Astrophotography by Anthony Ayiomamitis

Lunar Image Gallery - Sunrise/Sunset Light Rays

Although the moon has been observed by amateurs and professionals for many centuries, a phenomenon which is considered extremely rare is that of a lunar ray. More specifically, when the rising or setting sun is at a very low angle relative to a lunar feature such as a crater, even a couple of degrees, sunlight may pierce through one of the clefts in the crater's wall and project a ray across the crater floor. Although observational reports of such rays date back to the mid-1800's, there exist but a few such reports and even fewer images. This project is something I started to pursue during the spring of 2003 after reading the excellent article by Robert Robinson in the Reflector (Dec/2002, pg 15). To date, reports indicate that these rays may be observed for only a handful of craters and only during a two- to three-hour window.


Image Details
Lunar Crater Maginus
Imaging Details
Crater:
Maginus

Quadrant:
SW

Lunar Coord:
6.3° W, 50.5° S

Diameter:
194.0 km

Height:
0 km

Rukl:
73

Lunation:
08d 01h 51m



Note: Seeing very poor including thin clouds and slight winds.
Date:
Jul 07, 2003
20:50 - 21:06 UT+3


Location:
Athens, Greece

Equipment:
Celestron 14" SCT
Losmandy G-11
Philips ToUCam PCVC 740k


Video Imaging:
9 AVI / 3640 frames
Frame Rate : 5 fps
Exposure : 1/25 sec
Brightness : 50%
Contrast : 75%
Gamma : 50%
Saturation : 50%

Software:
K3CCDTools V1.0.6.460
AVI2BMP V0.49c (US)
CCDSoft V5.00.112
Photoshop V6


Processing:
Selective Sampling (91/3640)
Alignment
Stacking (Ave Combine)
Richardson-Lucy Deconvolution
Maximum Entropy
Unsharp Masking
JPG Compression

Copyright © 2001-2005, Anthony Ayiomamitis. All rights reserved.