spaceman_spiff

This is the final animation made from 60 individual stacked images each made from 2 minutes of data taken duing the night of 13/14 March. The gap in the sequence was caused when my camera battery died. Recharging it took about 30 minutes. This took a lot of effort to process each image but it was well worth it. Strange to be converting the original video to a single frame, only to combine those frames to make a video... Scope: SW Skymax 150 F/D = 12 plus a 2x Televue Barlow giving an effective F/D ~ 24, I also used a Baader fringe killer. Camera: Canon 550D, 640X480 movie crop mode, ISO = 800, exposure = 1/60s. Processing: Each stacked image was made of 2 mins of video (7200 frames). The best 2000 frames were selected and decompressed in Pipp. These frames were sent to Registax where the were aligned using between 40 and 50 align points. The frames comprising the best 90% in quality were retained. The frames were stacked with 2x drizzle. RGB align corrected for residual CA, The first 3 wavelets were enhanced (interval = 1) and the gamma + colour balance were altered. Final gif frames were cropped and centred in Gimp and the gif was produced using the GNU/Linux convert command.

This was my second attempt at imaging a Jovian eclipse. Last time I was thwarted by the weather, this time I was ready! I added my Telvue 2x Barlow lens to the scope which really amplified the image scale. The extra pixels covering Jupiter really added detail. I've owned that Barlow for ages but been too worried it would degrade my images so didn't use it. Now I realise what a decent Barlow can do. I have actually recorded 3 hours of short videos that I intend to turn into an animation of the event. For now, this is a single stacked still. I also want to say that Stellarium was not very accurate in predicting the Io eclipse...It showed the event stating about 20 minutes after the actual start. Telescope and accessories: SW Skymax 150 Mak-Cass F/D = 12 F = 1800mm. Baader fringe killer and Telvue 2x Barlow placed 8-10 cm from the sensor. EQ5pro mount with pillar extension. Canon 550D in 640X480 movie crop mode, 60fps, ISO 800 Exposure = 1/60s. Processing: Movie length was around 2 minutes (7200 frames), I use Pipp to extract and decompress the nest 2000 frames. These go into Registax and I select the best 90% of these. I increase the first three wavelets in the Gaussian mode (some trial and error involved here). I remove residual CA using RGB align estimate, The gamma curve is set to a sigmoidal shape to increase contrast and the histogram is stretched to enhance colours. Image cropped in Gimp. Note to all...if you have a good quality Barlow hiding away get it in front of your camera!

This is a close up of the southern highlands region with Clavius in the centre. The telescope/camera/processing details are the same as the larger mosaic. This area is well illuminate as the terminator is quite a way to the west. I'm a big fan of this area because of the heavily detailed landscape and heavy foreshortening at this latitude. The southern horizon goes about as far as Newton which just touches 80 degrees south.

This was first images session for a long time and I felt a bit out of practice. The Moon was about 9 days old the terminator extended from north to south from the north pole near Anaxagoras/Goldschmidt down past the Sinus Iridium (with it's walls just on the terminator) and Mare Imbrium to Oceanus Procellarum with Montes Carpatus (Kepler is yet to be revealed). The terminator then passes the Mare Humorum but the great multi-walled Gassendi only shows the very tip of it's inner peak and outer walls. The terminator then goes south to the sharply defined craters Hainzel and Mee. Schiller is barely illuminated showing only the highest parts of its crater walls. The terminator finally moves on to the far southern region with my favourite crater Clavius. Interestingly there are lots of far southern craters almost reaching the pole including Morelus, Short and Newton. Telescope: SW 150mm F12 Mak-Cass. With a Baader fringe killer filter. Camera: Canon EOS 550D in 60 frames/s movie crop mode, ISO 100, exposure 1/100s. I took 3 minute recordings for each image (10800 frames). Processing: Movies were initially processed in Pipp, keeping the best 2000 frames and decompressing them. The decompressed frames were then passed to Registax aligned using 100 points. The best 90% of the frames (using the Registergraph quality measure) were kept and stacked. The final image was enhanced by amplifying the first three wavelets by 80, 20, and 5 respectively. The Gamma was increased to 1.2. Comments: As before I noticed the performance of the scope increasing as it cooled down. My plan was to do 60fps videos for about 1 hour and then take hundreds of stills to process whole hemispheres of the Moon. I checked my focusing every 30 minutes but once the scope cooled to ambient the focus understandably stayed constant. As for my stills, I took over 500 of them. However I am having trouble processing them. The only way I can get them through Registax is to convert them to jpgs which lowers the quality. I am trying pngs instead and till try to upload something soon.

GIF made of two images taken about 13 mins apart (00:30 and 00:43 on 09/03/2017). I wanted to catch the Europa transit but cloud scuttled my plans. My best image of Jupiter yet...I will next see what happens when I add my Teleview 2x Barlow to the mix! I haven;t been that impressed with the Barlow in the past but that was before I realised the the telescope needed more than 1 hour to properly cool down. Telescope: SW Skymax 150 (F/D = 12) Focal length 1800mm. Camera and optical accessories: Canon 550D in 640X480 movie crop mode, ISO 200, exposure 1/100s. A Baader fringe killer was added to reduce any CA. Processing: Initial frame decompression and quality sorting was done in Pipp. I retain the best 3000 frames from about 3 mins of data (10800 frames in total) and disable the auto-centering function (this causes conflicts with Registax). In Registax, I use around 13 align points and stack using the registergraph. I stack only frames that make it past the best 90% in the registergraph. I then increased the first 3 wavelets to around 75% and the last wavelets to around 50%. I use RGB align estimate to remove residual CA and increased gamma to 1.2.

Date of image 07/02/2017. Hardware details: Camera: Canon 550D in 640X480 movie crop mode 60fps. ISO 200 exposure 1/60s. Telescope: SW Skymax 150 MakCass. Baader fringe killer was used and the camera was at prime focus. Mount: EQ5 Pro. The scope was focused using a Bahtinov mask on a bright star. The stack is taken from about 5 minutes of video (~18000 frames). The details of processing are the same as the mosaic. Comments: The image shows the far northern region of the moon. It was taken after the scope properly cooled down so the resolution is pretty good. Unfortunately it does not 'fit' in the mosaic because the image scale has changed slightly. Some lunar landmarks include: Craters Goldschmidt and Anaxagoras in the centre and half of Philolaus to the left of the image (West). Scoresby, Challis and Main craters can also be seen here. Thanks to liberation, the lunar north pole is viable just above Main.

This was just a quick Lunar imaging session since I had a friend over. The Moon was about 10 days old the terminator extended from north to south from Philolaus and J. Herschel down past the Sinus Iridium and Mare Imbrium to Oceanus Procellarum with Kepler (I also took an extra image of nearby Copernicus). The terminator then passes the Mare Humorum and the great multi-walled Gassendi before going south to the contrasty crater Schiller and finally onto my favourite crater Clavius. Telescope: SW 150mm F12 Mak-Cass. With a Baader fringe killer filter. Camera: Canon EOS 550D in 60 frames/s movie crop mode, ISO 200, exposure 1/60s. I took 3 minute recordings for each image (10800 frames). Processing: Movies were initially processed in Pipp, keeping the best 2000 frames and decompressing them. The decompressed frames were then passed to Registax aligned using 100 points. The best 90% of the frames (using the Registergraph quality measure) were kept and stacked. The final image was enhanced by amplifying the first three wavelets by 80, 20, and 5 respectively. The Gamma was reduced to 0.8. Comments: I only had a short time available to cover the terminator this time but I had a lot of fun doing it! As the telescope cooled down, its performance improved dramatically. I actually went back to the northern region after about 90 minutes and took some movies for comparison. The results were much sharper but I could not use them in the mosaic because the focal point of the scope had changed and the images were a slightly different scale. It serves as a reminder to always capture nearby regions together instead of scanning across the Moon linearly. I was also impressed at the ease of focusing: I could not use a Bhatinov mask until the stars came out well into the imaging session so I just focused until the Moon was as sharp as possible... When I checked my focusing later I was spot on! I constantly refocused throughout the session because the scope was still cooling down.

Stacked image of the far southern Lunar terminator region on 04/01/2016 (~19:00) with the craters Manzinus (top right) and Schomberger (top right). Telescope: SW 150mm F12 Mak-Cass. With a Baader fringe killer filter. Mount: SW EQ5 pro with extension pillar. Camera: Canon EOS 550D in 60 frames/s movie crop mode, ISO 400, exposure 1/60s. I took 3 minute recordings (10800 frames). Processing: Movies were initially processed in Pipp, keeping the best 2000 frames and decompressing them. The decompressed frames were then passed to Registax aligned using 100 points. The best 90% of the frames (using the Registergraph) were kept and stacked. The final image was enhanced by amplifying the first three wavelets by 80, 20, and 5 respectively. The Gamma was reduced to 0.8. Drizzle 2x was also used. Comments: I went back to this region after I completed the first pass of the terminator. The deep shadows really show the relief of the lunar surface. The huge foreshortening effects makes it quite difficult to identify some of the craters.

Stacked image of the mid-northern Lunar terminator region on 04/01/2016 (~17:30) with the craters Eudoxus (bottom left), Burg (top left), part of Posidonius (top right) and the mare Serenitatis (right). Telescope: SW 150mm F12 Mak-Cass. With a Baader fringe killer filter. Mount: SW EQ5 pro with extension pillar. Camera: Canon EOS 550D in 60 frames/s movie crop mode, ISO 400, exposure 1/60s. I took 3 minute recordings (10800 frames). Processing: Movies were initially processed in Pipp, keeping the best 2000 frames and decompressing them. The decompressed frames were then passed to Registax aligned using 100 points. The best 90% of the frames (using the Registergraph) were kept and stacked. The final image was enhanced by amplifying the first three wavelets by 80, 20, and 5 respectively. The Gamma was reduced to 0.8. Drizzle 2x was also used. Comments: This image shows the middle lunar region slightly away from the terminator in the mid-north region of the Moon. I really enjoy the contrast between the hilly terrain of the Montes Caucasus (bottom left) and the smooth floor of Mare Serenitatis. Very happy with this one!

Stacked image of the mid Lunar terminator region on 04/01/2016 with the craters Delambre (bottom right), rima Ariadeaus (bottom left) and the mare Tranquillatitis (top). Telescope: SW 150mm F12 Mak-Cass. With a Baader fringe killer filter. Camera: Canon EOS 550D in 60 frames/s movie crop mode, ISO 400, exposure 1/60s. I took 3 minute recordings (10800 frames). Processing: Movies were initially processed in Pipp, keeping the best 2000 frames and decompressing them. The decompressed frames were then passed to Registax aligned using 100 points. The best 90% of the frames (using the Registergraph) were kept and stacked. The final image was enhanced by amplifying the first three wavelets by 80, 20, and 5 respectively. The Gamma was reduced to 0.8. Drizzle 2x was also used. Comments: This image shows the middle lunar region slightly away from the terminator. The rima Ariadeaus is really striking here being interrupted by the lunar terrain. The edge of the Mare Tranquillatitis also shows well here, marking the beginning of more mountainous terrain.

Stacked image of the Southern Lunar region with the craters Maurolycus, Barocious, Stofler and Faraday. I made a mosaic of frames but I will comment of the best individual frames here as well. Taken on 04/01/2016 (~16:00). Telescope: SW 150mm F12 Mak-Cass. With a Baader fringe killer filter. Camera: Canon EOS 550D in 60 frames/s movie crop mode, ISO 400, exposure 1/60s. I took 3 minute recordings for each image (10800 frames). Processing: Movies were initially processed in Pipp, keeping the best 2000 frames and decompressing them. The decompressed frames were then passed to Registax aligned using 100 points. The best 90% of the frames (using the Registergraph) were kept and stacked. The final image was enhanced by amplifying the first three wavelets by 80, 20, and 5 respectively. The Gamma was reduced to 0.8. Drizzle 2x was also used. Comments: This was taken during twilight with the telescope not accurately focused. Even so, I was able to pick out quite a lot of detail here. The high walls of Maurolycus and Stofler create deep shadow that obscures most of the inside of the craters apart from the huge inner peak of Maurolycus, that just dips into the sunlight.