Sunrise Over Copernicus

[Virgoman]

Hi Everyone. Just posting  a capture of Copernicus crater as it was emerging from the terminator - the moon was about 9.5 days old. The rising sun is highlighting the terraced walls of this imposing crater nicely and the partially illuminated floor contrasts with the still inky blackness of those of Reinhold A & B below. This image is taken from my Flickr page and was obtained on a night of beautiful seeing back in March of this year. Taken with a Celestron C8 and ASI 120MM. Health issues mean I don`t get out as often as I would like - well that and the normally crappy weather! It is around 6 months since I last posted on any of the forums so I reckoned it was time to return! Been dabbling in deep sky efforts in the interim with mixed results!!  Anyway, enough waffle - thanks for looking & best regards!

                                                                                                       Ralph

[scarp15]

Great, arresting composition and engaging title, would sit well in a frame.

[Virgoman]

Many thanks for your kind comments Iain. Much appreciated.

Ralph.

[Pete Presland]

very nicely captured, nothing better than craters appearing out of the terminator.

[Vox45]

Very nice !

Good details and nice framing, I like it a lot

[Virgoman]

Many Thanks for the comments Pete & Vox45. Much appreciated.

[Robp]

I echo the other comments made here, lovely detail.

[bish]

Great shot.

[CATLUC]

Nice image good job.

Good night.

Luc

[Virgoman]

Many thanks Rob, Bish & Luc for taking the time to comment. They are very much appreciated .

                                     Best regards,

                                                            Ralph

[Twisted Lip]

Well I'm not going to lie, that picture has properly knocked me off my chair. One of the best lunar images I've seen in a long time!

How did you stack and process if you don't mind me asking?

Will

[Virgoman]

Well I'm not going to lie, that picture has properly knocked me off my chair. One of the best lunar images I've seen in a long time!

How did you stack and process if you don't mind me asking?

Will

Firstly Will, thank you very much for your comments on my image. Very much appreciated indeed  . Yes, this image is the result of an imaging session way back on 10th March. The resulting avi was just over a minute long resulting in just over 1800 frames. I put the video through Autostakkert 2 ticking the surface and expand option in "Image Stabilization" section. Quality estimator on gradient.  I knew, visually inspecting the avi, that the focus was good and this coupled with good seeing meant I had good SNR  so I set robust at 2.

I anchored the video (green box) on Copernicus and ran analyse. The resultant best 50% frames were used and alignment points placed (size 200). These frames were then stacked. The stacked frame was saved as a TIFF and then opened with Registax 6. Using only wavelets 2 & 3 I gently increased their value to sharpen the result - it is very important to use these powerful tools sparingly as it is very easy to overcook the image giving an artificial look .

The resultant sharpened image was then saved as a TIFF and contrast, brightness etc was then carried out in a graphics program such as Gimp/Photoshop etc. Also the image can be cropped to remove any tracking anomalies at the edges! 

I hope this helps but the overall arbiter is, of course, the seeing on the night.

                                                       Best regards,

                                                                              Ralph

[Twisted Lip]

Thanks Ralph, top information. I've never really used AS!2 (for any stacking stuff I've only ever had experience of Registax) so it's inreresting to see how you've made use of it.

Completely coincidentally however, I was trying out a new camera yesterday for some Solar stuff and typically the output was MP4 which Registax doesn't recognise so I looked only yesterday afternoon to download AS!2 for the first time!

Just coming back to this again I'm still wowed by the quality of the image, the focus is spot on and the the seeing must have been fantastic.

Thanks so much for the response, I'm going to try some of the advice this weekend!

Cheers

Will