Stacking lunar images using Canon DSLR

[cgarry]

I am glad you did not give up on AP, but I do think it is nice to just get out and do some old fashioned visual observing sometimes and not worry about all the cameras, wires and computers involved in imaging.

I agree with everything that James has said, especially the part about spending lots of time getting the focus right. I will happily spend ages making fine adjustments while looking at a massively zoomed in image on the laptop screen and on some ocassions be less happy as the cloud rolls in before I can actualy capture any images...

Cheers,

Chris

[ilove1995]

I think that's looking very nice now. There are some clear artefacts that I'm sure are because it's been converted to JPEG, so quite possibly before that it looks even better (I keep my images as TIFF or PNG because JPEG does unpleasant things to them). I hope you're pleased you persisted. Sounds like you are.

One of the really nice things about SGL is that people post images and explain what kit they used and how they processed the image, but because going into a lot of detail can be tedious it does tend to be a relatively brief description and that may have the unfortunate side-effect of misleading people into the belief that imaging is just a question of pointing the camera and telescope at what you want, getting a load of subs, running them through whatever tools you need and out comes a lovely image at the end.

Unfortunately that's not how it is. I will often spend significantly more time just getting the focusing right than is actually represented in the captured data. By the time I'm happy I might actually only be moving the focuser by tenths or even less of a degree. And once I've captured the data (for a Moon shot, say) I could end up running it through Registax anything between half a dozen and a dozen times choosing different reference frames, different numbers of alignment points and numbers of frames to stack perhaps taking as much as a couple of hours to get a result I'm happy with. And that's before I've even got to playing with wavelets. As I've improved it's got even worse because I've become more demanding and started to pick up on smaller faults. I'm certain I'm hardly alone there.

So it does require a fair amount of hard work and dogged persistence, it can be infuriating and frustrating and you can end up throwing away all the data you've captured one night because it no longer meets the standards you now set for yourself. On the other hand, when it comes right and you have an image you feel really good about it's fantastically rewarding. It's also important to remember that whilst you (or I, or anyone else) might aspire to create images as good as those posted by others, the person you really need to do better than is the one who created your last image

I'm all for having something like a dob or other wide field telescope too. I very much enjoy imaging, but visually you get to experience the sky in a completely different yet equally enjoyable, unfussy and uncomplicated way. I try to keep the lunar and solar imaging going all the time when circumstances allow, but otherwise there are times when it's very pleasant just to drag out a scope and spend a few hours "looking at stuff". I did that most of last summer/autumn, had loads of fun and saw things that, if I'd been imaging, I'd probably have missed.

James

Thanks James. I learn't a lot from last nights imaging session and processing of old lunar data. I experimented with taking sample raw files at different exposures to see how both PIPP and Registax 6 handled them. What I ended up with was an image with ghosting whenever the output files from PIPP were saved as TIFF. I then ran the same processing but with the files saved as BMP and each set of files produced a stacked image with little to no ghosting being present at all.

Unfortunately at this point the moon got clouded out which is why I resorted to using my last good imaging session from the 18th Feb. I had 100 raw files to play with so I ran 48 of them through PIPP and stacked them in Reg 6 as BMP files which gave me the attached image after wavelets were applied.

Therefore to summarise... 48 raw files from 18th Feb taken at 1/80, iso set to 400 captured on my 600d and run through PIPP with stacking and wavelets applied in Reg 6.

Very happy with the image which is now the wallpaper backdrop on my pc.

Al

[ilove1995]

I am glad you did not give up on AP, but I do think it is nice to just get out and do some old fashioned visual observing sometimes and not worry about all the cameras, wires and computers involved in imaging.

I agree with everything that James has said, especially the part about spending lots of time getting the focus right. I will happily spend ages making fine adjustments while looking at a massively zoomed in image on the laptop screen and on some ocassions be less happy as the cloud rolls in before I can actualy capture any images...

Cheers,

Chris

Thanks Chris. Moon is out again tonight so I'm hoping to get some more practise in.

Al

[knobby]

After a disappointing imaging session tonight I thought I'd have one last crack at attempting to process the lunar stills I took on the 18th Feb. This time I've output the files as bmp from PIPP instead of TIFF and ran 48 of them through Registax 6.

Below is the resulting image. I think I could have gone a tad more aggressive with wavelets but it's taken me all night to get to this point and I'm happy with the final image and don't wish to spoil it.

Job done...

Al

Very nice!

[ilove1995]

Cheers Gary.