Waning Gibbous Moon DeepZoom

71% Illuminated Waning Gibbous Moon Captured on 22 September 2024

This is one of my most detailed and largest images of the moon taken as of now (September 2025). I captured 25 panels of different sections of the moon and stitched them together to come up with this massive 144 megapixel mosaic. Each of those panels had 3000 frames each so in total I captured 75000 frames. The raw data itself was over 144 GB and the processing took several hundred GB of storage space. I developed my own techniques to extract the most details possible with the tools and data I had.

The colors in this image is boosted to reveal minerals on the lunar surface. The red hues represent iron oxides and the the bluish regions are rich in titanium.

I look forward to capturing larger and more detailed images of the moon in the near future.

GEARS

Telescope: Celestron Nexstar 8SE
Camera: QHY 5L III 462C
Mount: iOptron CEM40