Some Of The Deepest & Sharpest Shots of The Moon from Earth

By Nancy Atkinson - November 7, 2016 at 11:48 AM UTC | Planetary Science
copernic-crater.jpg

Who doesn't love to gaze at the Moon on a clear night? But astrophotographer

Thierry Legault

now taken Moon-gazing to new heights. Legault traveled to the Alps in August and set up his Celestron C14 Edge HD and ZWO ASI1600MM camera. The results are absolutely stunning.

"These are the largest and sharpest quarters ever," Legault said via email, adding that he created mosaic images of 10 fields for a definition of

150 million pixels

!

Above you can see incredible detail in the 58 mile-wide (93 km) impact crater Copernicus.

Below is a lunar quarter taken on August 24, 2016:

[caption id="attachment_131825" align="aligncenter" width="500"]

Image of the Moon taken on August 24, 2016 from the Alps. Credit and copyright: Thierry Legault. Used by permission. [/caption]

Legault has been known to travel wherever it takes to get the best shots, for example traveling through Germany, France and Spain

to capture shots of space shuttle Endeavour on its final mission

, or finding the best locations for stunning and sometimes ground-breaking shots of the International Space Station

crossing the Sun

or

Moon,

or views of

spy satellites in orbit

.

In his book, "

Astrophotography

," Legault said that for clear close-ups of the Moon, good atmospheric conditions are a must, as well as having a finely tuned or collimated telescope. Below is a close-up view of Triesnecker crater and the surrounding region near the central part of the Moon's near side, including sharp view of the rilles.

[caption id="attachment_131824" align="aligncenter" width="580"]

Triesnecker crater in the central part of the Moon's near side is 26 km in diameter and 2.7 km deep. A system of rilles can also be seen. Credit and copyright: Thierry Legault. Used by permission. [/caption]

For processing these images Legault used AutoStakkert!2 (AS!2), PTGui stitching software and Photoshop.

You can see more of these stunning shots at

Legault's website

, where he says he'll have posters of these images available soon.

Of course, you can try seeing these features on the Moon yourself. Even binoculars or a small telescope can provide wonderful views of our closest companion in space. An upcoming full Moon (Super Moon!) on November 14, 2016, will feature the closest full Moon (356,509 kilometers away) until November 25, 2034 (356,448 kilometers away.)

Our thanks to Thierry Legault for sharing these wonderful new images of the Moon!

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com