SUPER-HIPER BIG moon with refractor SW ACHROMATIC 150

[luis]

Refractor SW ACHROMATIC Skywatcher 150 + DSLR 550 + barlow 2X + filter IR/UV

2 mosaic single jpeg joined in one big image

It was so big, that is compressed, so it loosed some quality.

I can say that visually this achromatic has superb definition on moon, in spite of the blue CA. Also Saturn had great view.

Hope you like,

Greetings from Portugal,

Luis Beja

[kris h]

Excellent lunar image Luis as always

Looks like the moon getting a atmosphere

[southernman]

Lovely image !!

[barkis]

A most splendid two pane mosaic Luis. The 150 Achromatic Frac. has done the business for sure. I own one too, and I love the instrument, and the CA doesn't worry me at all either.

The lunar views are always so good, I don't think I will ever even think of selling it.

Great great picture this is.

Ron.

[hayju01]

Now that IS impressive! Great Image

[johnh]

That is a glorious Moon, looks good this size, the big Mares have come out very well.

John.

[astropete]

what a picture. another contender for pow. love it.

[twotter]

Great image

I wonder how many features of the Lunar 100 are present in this picture

[nightfisher]

awesome luis, your work on the lunar imaging inspires me, might try a mono sample of this image see how it looks with no false colour

[GazOC]

Very impressive!

[nightfisher]

had a quick go with monochrome

[Ags]

Amazing!

[virtualpilot45]

Didn't take long for super big moons to go out of fashion, now it's HYPER big! Brilliant image

[Ags]

I thought I could remove the color fringe by making a luminence channel from the green channel (which is the sharpest of the three channels). This is the result - a color image, but the high-contrast areas look a bit sickly:

(Hope you don't mind me having a go - I don't image but the data intrigued me)

It is informative looking at the sharpness of the three color channels - green is excellent, red has some fringing and blue is just a blur.

To fix the false color on high contrast areas, I guess the green and red channels could be blurred to match the blue channel. It would work OK for an object like the moon, which does not have sharp color changes which would show up the blurring.

[Ags]

I meant to ask Luis - the focussing is really sharp. Are you using the default ST150 focusser or did you replace the focusser with a dual-speed lockable one?

[luis]

Hi,

Thanks all the coments!

nightfisher,

thanks the monochrome version to show the difference.

I just posted the original color, to show the all true result with the great SW ACHRO 150, the great definition, but also the noted CA.

Ags,

Wow, it´s the APO version???

you almost transformed it into an APO. Thanks for the tests, the result is a cleaner image, without the most of the strong blue aberration.

I meant to ask Luis - the focussing is really sharp. Are you using the default ST150 focusser or did you replace the focusser with a dual-speed lockable one?

I´m using the default ST150 focusser! Is very very poor, but since I don´t use much this scope, I will not spend money on it.

Regards,

Luis

[Ags]

I've had this idea for reprocessing achro images for a while (using green as luminance) but owning a mak and not owning a DSLR I've had no data to try it out.

I definitely think the yellowing of terminator details could be fixed too. Either by applying a blur to the red and green channels as suggested before, or using green for both the blue and green data, or by grabbing back some of the blue light from black regions and blurring this as a blue wash over the currently yellow areas? The last idea sounds hard to do and hard to get right.

If you converted this image to a monochrome just using the green channel data I think you would have a POW. The green channel is really really sharp.

I've read that startravels have bad spherical aberation but I don't see that in your image at all.

[russ]

That is a superb image and as the others have said, the CA doesn't bother.

[PaulG]

Excellent work, this has raised the bar for prime focus work.

What F ratio are you working at and is this a 1.25" or 2" barlow.

Paul

[Ags]

The detail is amazing - way beyond what I can see with my mak. Were you using any filtering (like a minus violet filter)? And were you using a DSLR (I'm assuming so from the number of pixels in the image)?

[Adz]

Fantastic, jaw dropping focus and giant image. I am very impressed

[nightvision]

Amazing image, 12mp really works.

thanks for posting Luis! Couldn't resist playing with so much great data, took the green and monochromed it in PSP and it is really sharp! Projected on to a 2.4m screen and it's like flying over the surface

Makes me think astro-photography doesn't have to be so expensive.

I suppose it's possible to image DSOs filtered RGB and focus each colour via an Achro and combine in Registax or DSS?

[brantuk]

The CA is certainly worth tollerating for that superb view of the moon

[Adz]

So it is this scope here?

First Light Optics - Skywatcher Evostar 150 OTA

[nightvision]

So it is this scope here?

First Light Optics - Skywatcher Evostar 150 OTA

That's a point, it probably is the F8 Evostar, had it been the F5 Startravel the mosaic wouldn't have been required. (Just checked in CCD-Calc)