Copernicus

Copernicus: This fresh young crater dominates the terminator with ease in the days around First Quarter. Situated in Mare Insularum, this 95km diameter formation sports steep walls about 900 meters high and three distinct central peaks .

Image Details:  Celestron C8 and Celestron Neximage camera. Camera control with  K3CCD Tools and processing with Registax 4. This image was done on the spur of the moment following some testing of Nexremote on a new laptop computer. A look through the Ultima C8 OTA's eyepiece revealed some fairly impressive seeing, and I ducked back inside and grabbed the little Neximage webcam...err..."Solar System Imager." The C8 was riding on Celestron's computerized CG5 mount (which features a "Solar System Align" mode, making it easy to get setup quickly for Lunar and planetary observing (no multiple star alignments, just tell the mount "Moon" or "Saturn" or whatever and align on that object). The Neximage camera was equipped with a Baader IR block filter.

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