Two Moons & Long March Traverses Leo
I'm finally starting to get the sort of results on the Moon I know my camera and lens should be able to do, Sony NEX C3 200mm f4 Yashinon at f8. First shot is from yesterday morning, second from this morning. I'm using a form of "lucky imaging" where I take about two or three hundred shots in a row by holding down the shutter button and then software on my computer sorts out the best twenty images and stacks them. You end up with a very smooth but rather soft final image which then sharpens remarkably well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_imaging
The second set of images is a Chinese (presumably surveillance) satellite in a polar orbit that was launched by a Long March rocket, it was the brightest satellite of the evening a couple of days ago. NEX C3 28mm f2.0 Vivitar at f2.8, first image is four exposures of 6 seconds each at ISO 3200 stacked together to give the dashed trail, second image is one unprocessed file straight out of the camera as submitted to astrometry.net where the constellations and brighter stars were marked (out of 4323 stars detected in the image). I set up the camera ten minutes in advance, didn't have to move it at all to get the shot, just waited for the satellite to show up and then pressed the shutter button for five exposures in a row (first exposure was a little too early and off the shot to the left). North is to the right in both shots and the bright object at the extreme left edge is Jupiter. The satellite was a good bit brighter than it appears in the image, the fact it's moving makes the streak much dimmer in the picture than an equivalently bright star that illuminates the same spot for all six seconds.
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