the moon tonight 07-10-11

[astropete]

taken at 2000

127mm skywatcher, camera samsung nv4 8mp, e/p 25mm a-focal shot.

[Quatermass]

Nice one Pete I was out there as well this evening and this was my shot.Took 4 shots with my camera attached to my barlow lens and then stiched them together in Photoshop, got to love the moon but hoping to see some meteorites tomorrow night too

[astropete]

good pic there quatermass, i think its about time i had a go of multi stacking, as yet i have no idea how to. must do some reading.

[nightfisher]

pete thats one of your best yet, regarding stacking, have you tried taking a movie with your samsung and then stacking in registax

[Quatermass]

There was a great article on creating Lunar mosaics in the Sky at Night mag in Mays edition part 2 of there astrophotography series. You can still get a back copy from them if your interested or they have it on there website I think.

I use Photoshop CS5 to do the blending of the images its quick and works well. Just go to File-Automate-Photo merge and from there select your images with the browse button' leave the setting on automatic and tick blend images together. It will then create the mosaic for you and does a pretty good job so long as your images are clear and have the same exposures.

I found when taken the shots of the moon you have to watch your exposure on the brighter parts or you end up with uneven sections that are over exposed. After I have done the mosaic I flatten all the layers and then I duplicate the flattened layer, change its blend mode to soft light, duplicate that layer and change its blend mode to Luminosity, and just lower the opacity a little which helps with the colour and overall effects.

Learning Photoshop with deep sky objects certainly helps when it comes to doing a mosaic of the moon but there's a good sticky on the imaging section with lots of helpful links to tutorials for Photoshop.

You can also do all this in Registax with video shots of the moon and I did that with my old mobile phone.

Here a pic of my camera with the Barlow lens attached

[astropete]

thanks nightfisher. i do have video shots of the moon, so i will try that.

thanks for the heads up quatermass, i will have a go.