Various Webcam Moon captures

[Peter Reader]

Hi all,

Tried to get some good moon shots last night. Not sure these are very good really. Took the best 30% of 3k frames and ended up stacking between 1k and 2k for each picture.

Comments welcome!

Plato?:

2x barlow of the same region:

If anyone can put names to any of these please do!

Thanks

Pete

[Zakalwe]

Plato?:

Yep, thats Plato:icon_salut:, with the Montes Tenerife mountains below it.

Thats the Mare Frigoris. Harpalus is the crater in the darker Mare in the centre of the image. Pythagoras is the big 'un at the top with the noticeable central spike.

[costeveol]

Great pics

[Peter Reader]

Thanks very much both of you!

[Zakalwe]

Peter, two things that I use to identify Lunar features, which you might find useful:

The Full moon Atlas

The Virtual moon Atlas (100Mb download)

What program did you use to stack the .avis? If you are using Registax, then try the linked Wavelets in version 6. Whack the wavelets up high, then up the DeNoise amount over each wavelet. You'll be amazed at the detail it can extract.

[Peter Reader]

That's a fantastic tip!

Before:

After, using linked wavelets and drizzling:

Will use drizzling all the time from now on for every capture!

However: what are the lines that cross the image? How do I get rid of them in the processing?

[Zakalwe]

That's a fantastic tip!

Will use drizzling all the time from now on for every capture!

However: what are the lines that cross the image? How do I get rid of them in the processing?

If you are using a colour camera, either try processing it in black and white, or alternatively, after stacking select "RGB Align" from the panel on the right hand side. When you push the wavelets hard you can get funny artefacts appearing. I think that the RGB Align helps.

You can also crop the image in Registax after applying the wavelets. That'll crop out the edges where the field of view drifted in the .avi (see the grainy bit on the left hand side of your image, and the white line along the bottom and on the right hand side?).

[Zakalwe]

The other thing to do, is load the .avi file into Registax. Find a good frame then hit "Set Alignpoints". Then click "Scan Frames". This will do a quick align and Registax will then only use parts of the frame that are in every frame of the .avi. It wont put any align points in a region that drifts out of the field of view of the .avi (I find that my scope doesn't track that accurately and I have to "nudge" it using the POTH scope controls on the laptop).

Doing this means that the central part of the frames are more accurately aligned as it is not trying to match alignment points that are not in all frames.

[Peter Reader]

Ok thanks for the advice. However, occasionally my processing area becomes a black rectangle. How do I stop this?