Moon, 20 February

[JamesF]

Bit of a mixed night, tonight. Clear sky, but gusting wind, then the clouds came in and after waiting to see how it went they were just getting thicker and thicker so I packed up. Now it is clear again I could do with an early night, I guess, and there's this unfinished bottle of red...

Anyhow, 61 of 120 frames stacked, 1/1000th @ ISO800, 450D and 127 Mak. Processed using PIPP and Registax v6.

I've only missed two days out of the last week; one to cloud and the other to poorly-taken images, though I'm feeling the temptation to perhaps revisit those in an effort to get something out of them. Looks like tomorrow might be on the cards too, but after that I'm not sure.

James

[SnakeyJ]

Nice again James - looks like you're enjoying better seeing than we are from the Isle of Wight, I had the moon dancing all over my screen at F15 on my SW200P - made worse by the weight of my filter wheel slowly dragging the focuser tube out (some adjustment needed. I eventually managed to get IR, R, G & B images of the same craters, but the quality was poor. Still it gave me my first attempt at working with layered LRGB images in Gimp - though unsurprisingly the net effect was shades of grey! I'd been aiming for a composite colour of Jupiter, but the seeing and focus problems caused me to swear and call it a night!

Hopefully the colder air tomorrow evening will be more stable, but meant to be clouding up later on - fingers crossed though!

[Space Cowboy]

Very nice crisp image James! Have you tried the ASI cam on the moon?

[Steve Ward]

Thanks for keeping us posted on the phase changes , nothing to see here for a week to come . . .

[JamesF]

Very nice crisp image James! Have you tried the ASI cam on the moon?

Oddly enough, that was what I was doing when the clouds arrived:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/178365-mare-nubium-and-bullialdus-crater/

James

[Stargazer33]

Nice one James.

I finally had a good night last night - once I worked out how to do continuous frames through EOS Utility!

I am hoping to stack them tonight after running the RAW frames through PIPP. Seeing was a bit off last night but way above anything we have had here recently. Fantastic views of the Moon at 333x (a bit high I know but I was doing a fine collimation with my new Bob's Knobs and just swung over to the moon afterwards).

James, how do you get such an even coverage in intensity over the moon? I have noticed this in your Moon shots before. Exposing correctly for the terminal line I get almost white out at the limb! For some reason my works computer wont allow me to download the pictures from my 8 Gb card so I can't post an example.

[JamesF]

Overexposing bits of the Moon is unfortunately way too easy. Some of it is exceptionally reflective and it's quite hard not to end up with over-bright highlights. To try to control that I tend to shoot frames fairly underexposed. A histogram two thirds full is the most I'd ever want to go and often it's nearer 50%. I can always stretch the histogram later (usually do), but it's better to do that than have areas that are blown out.

My testing seems to point to exposures of 1/1000th sec at ISO800 working best with my camera and scope. Assuming you're using the C8 and 1100D you might not need to go quite that far. I wouldn't go slower than 1/1000th for exposure because the seeing can catch you out, but you may well find you can drop down to ISO400. Experimentation is the name of the game though. You may find that with the newer camera 1/1250th or even 1/1500th works for you. I'd do some runs of, say, 50 frames at each speed with each ISO setting and see how it looks after you've stacked them.

James

[Stargazer33]

Thanks again James! Excellent advice again. Whenever we get a clear night again with near full Moon I will try and do as you suggest with the different settings. At the moment we have had days [nights] of continuous 100% cloud. My wife is having to use her anti-SAD lamp just to keep mind and soul together!

[JamesF]

I know the feeling. It's been permanently grey here for days. We are promised some clear sky tonight. Maybe. Depending on whose forecast you read.

James

[Stargazer33]

We had clear skies here last night - for a while. Not long enough for me to get set up though. Forecast here through the weekend is cloud! I will keep checking though, just in case.