Nearly full moon of Feb 18, 2011 - natural view. Photo by Ari Heinze.

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The moon is beautiful, and ever-changing. Libration, a varying tilt or 'wobble' in our viewing angle, ensures that our view of the moon is different every month even for the same phase. This image was my first attempt at an unclouded portrait of the moon using my new 8 inch F/5 newtonian.

Date/Time	February 18, 2011, about 21:30 CST
Equipment	Home-built eight-inch F/5 Newtonian telescope plus Nikon D3000 DSLR
Settings	Telescope stopped to about F/20 using cardboard mask. Film speed set to 200 ISO. Exposure time 1/25 sec. White balance auto.
Image processing	Cropped, rotated, and resized for web to 1500 pix width.
Image dimensions before resizing	2318x1800
Focus	Fair: slight blurring can be seen in the full-resolution raw image.
Motion blur	Negligible
Image noise	Low to moderate
Other technical comments	None.

Copyright 2011 Ari Heinze: all rights reserved.

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