Moon Mosaic with a Dodsonian

[Tiddles]

I've got high hopes for constructing a moon mosaic with a Dobsonian scope and mod'd XBox webcam.

Can anyone offer advice on my intended workflow before I put my effort in later this evening.

I hope to allow the image to drift across the FOV many times working top to bottom capturing several short avi's during each pass.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to run at fairly high frame rate and therefore aiming for 100 - 200 frames per capture.

From each of these captures I will process and stack in Registax 5.

The final mosaic will be constructed with ICE.

I know I need to keep the camera settings the same throughout the capture process.

Should I also keep processing in Registax the same for each avi or do I optimise the stack for each one. If kept the same is there a way to batch process the avi's?

I feel a long night ahead and any advice will be gratefully received.

Many thanks

Andy

Oooops, that would be a Dobsonian, not a Dodsonian!!!!

[russellhq]

I'm very interested in doing this myself, looking forward to the responses!

[Tiddles]

Nothing so far......time to test it out.

I may be some time!!

[Tiddles]

looking promising, stacked images are looking good. Hope I've not missed a bit!!

[Tiddles]

Well.......

I'm not too happy with the processing but need some sleep. I think the avi's are good enough to create a reasonable image.

I'll certainly be trying again as I think this shows some promise.

[hayju01]

I was doing similar tonight with a Mars and Saturn thrown in for good measure. See it here

Excellent first attempt there, does look like you missed a bit

Here is how I created mine

1. AVI of moon in STRIPS, top to bottom starting at RH side of moon

2. ICE each of these avis (9 in total)

3. RasterStitch each of these together

4. wavelets of fullmosaic TIFF in RS6

5. a little more sharpening in PS

I'm not overly happy with the improvements i got in steps 5&6 sure I can more out of this just need to spend some time on some lunar tutorials.

HTH and keep at it, its worth it for that feeling when you see a full lunar image that you've taken and composed yourself.

Justin

[russellhq]

Looks good Tiddles for a first shot. I wonder how you'll get rid of the banding?

[Tiddles]

ICE just wont stitch all of the images together. Parts of it look good, but it will not create the full mosaic,

[hayju01]

ICE just wont stitch all of the images together. Parts of it look good, but it will not create the full mosaic,

Check what ICE is doing with the Canera Motion under Stitch. It will probably use Automatic which means that each sticthed AVI can be handled slightly differently. I used Planar 1 for all 9 of my AVIs.

You have to let it do 'its thing' then change the Camera Motion and the ICE will do 'its thing' again using the one you select. Also make sure you save a TIFF to keep the quality high.

[Tiddles]

Thanks hayju01

I've tried all the camera motion methods and none seem to construct the image as it should be.