Just wow and thank you.
I have been dreaming of getting a shot of the moon since 9th April 2017, the first time I captured me looking up with my thermal camera. I joined this forum just to talk of the thought of Thermal Astrophotography. I have spent hours if no days looking for information on the internet on research projects with daylight infrared satellite tracking, meteors; reap up on different scopes and instruments that operate in the LWIR spectrum. I found two papers that looked at the moon, but not taking a real photo of it. I spent countless hours in the cold outside taking timelapse of the moon rising and clouds passing by. I spent weeks talking to people about optics, telescopes and lenses. I became fairly active in this forum and check it multiple times a day and post on here deep I the night (it's 2.27am right now). I got to my passion for thermal camera art and spent days looking for projects and more days to contact artist and find out about names and websites. I made contacts to build my own little auxiliary lens to get closer to the moon. I calculated and modeled a mirror telescope that would give me the perfect framing. I am planning to chose a university course in EE and CS to work on thermal imaging(if any of you got ideas for internships worldwide to work with thermal cameras for 6-9 months before that - let me know btw!). It took me a year untill I saw the first proofs of my dream with Ultrapurple having made shots of the moon rubberbanding his ThermApp to a small newtonian telescope and rubber banding a few thermal lenses together with some tape and plastic bottles to build a refractor to spark my interest further. I saw the first real image of the moon with some detail in focus and knew it was possible.
Now you come in with an even better camera and lot's of effort to produce this stunning image. I thank you bringing that rush back and confirming my hopes. Giving me an example to show people it is possible. I will continue to work. Just earlier today I started to modify my own lens to fix the Vignettierung a little by recentering it. I also got the thought that a shortening the focus mechanism on both sides will give me better infinity focus, so that is under way. Tomorrow I am going to a photo meetup for large format analog photography shooting some architecture, I will bring thermal camera and lens because I can only shoot two plates.
Is there any place for a high quality version of the image?
Do you think more is possible? Did you see anything else at f/5.6 through the scope? Some stars maybe a right nebula like M42 in Orion? (It is supposed to be bright in IR, but I have found zero shots of it in LWIR, some from a orbiting space telescope and narrowband 12.3microns in the gallery I posted some time ago) maybe other planets like Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn? They will be tiny but maybe worth a try and they are rather bright.
Sun is risky and will burn your sensor, maybe a special filter to only pass LWIR and reduce the heat in some way can make that possible.
Keep it up!
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This is a gallery so here are some shots of mine from today.
Camera: CAT S60 -> 80*60 Lepton
Lens: DIY build -> auxiliary 19mm, 2nd gen.
Software: ThermalCamera+ by George Friedrich
Subjects: the saddle of a Brompton bike, old lady walking past the fence, a strange shutter error I got for the first time with a nice pattern.
Bonus shot: friend with scarf as a study