Attempts at lunar photography using the Sony RX100 II

I tried to take my first astronomical photos using my Sony RX100 II. I used a Bushnell 900mm scope with 4.5” diameter mirror. Initially, at 20 megapixels you can already easily see that, despite using a photo that was done more than 10 seconds after the shutter was depressed, the image quality is degraded because of atmospheric turbulence. It was about 75 degrees and the air quality didn’t seem all that great, while the moon was about 26 degrees above the horizon. The totally black and white photos show what the moon looks like while using a red filter; as you can notice, there isn’t much improvement. I even did a high resolution, 79 megapixel stack. Other than that, I noticed some other interesting things: the side of the moon opposite of the shadow is significantly blurry. At the widest angle setting of the camera, 28mm, despite the fact that the moon appears smaller because it’s zoomed out, the lens appears to be sharper than it is at the longest focal range; but it’s not necessarily less sharp, but instead I’d say that there’s less contrast and so with the camera set to maximum zoom, the details appear to be less clear. For the 28mm focal length, I stopped down the aperture to f/2.8, which is just enough to produce an image without loss of sharpness. Meanwhile, for the longest focal range, I stopped down the aperture by one stop, and at that aperture the long focal length of the lens performs at it’s best. So, theoretically, you could just create a photo mosaic out of your magnified photos, but in my opinion, I’d rather do a stack @ 28mm than a mosaic of enlarged photos. I should try it out using IR photography, but that takes some investment. The best time for me to take lunar photos would be in late December or later in the winter, when atmospheric turbulence has decreased. I wonder what latitude on Earth would be best to capture such photos, since the moon’s altitude varies by latitude, and at the same time the varying climates make the equation much more complex.