Full Disc Lunar Imaging with a DSLR

[wxsatuser]

Stack of six frames from last night, lots of cloud about, 1/250 sec iso100, setup as my sig.

[JamesF]

That's a very good effort, I'd say.  I'm wondering, just looking at the image, if we're seeing quite a bit more of the western limb than usual at the moment.  Though it might well just be that I'm seeing quite a bit more of the Moon than has been usual over the last six months

James

[NGEddie]

This is my effort following the initial posts instructions - it is the best shot of the moon I have managed so thank you for the post! The only difference was i had to significantly reduce the exposure (to 1/2500, iso200) but I guess that is due to my scope being 200mm.

[JamesF]

This is my effort following the initial posts instructions - it is the best shot of the moon I have managed so thank you for the post! The only difference was i had to significantly reduce the exposure (to 1/2500, iso200) but I guess that is due to my scope being 200mm.

That's a very nice image

Experimenting with the exposure times is definitely worthwhile.  I'm not sure there can be any hard and fast rules.  I am currently (from memory) using 1/500th @ ISO200, but I have to use a mirror lockup delay otherwise I get ghosting in the image because of the vibration caused by the mirror moving.

James

[Steve Ward]

Dear Mod team ,

Would it be possible to have this excellent tutorial 'pinned' in the "Imaging - Lunar" forum , would make it much easier to find when required ... same with Roger's great starter thread on "Simple Solar Imaging" in the "Imaging - Solar" section ...

It's a crying shame that great threads like these get buried amongst the rest.

Regards ,

Steve.

[Stub Mandrel]

A great thread from before me joining SGL. I would only add:

I found iso 1600 gives good results with the 450D on the moon - the very short exposure helps  cut through bad seeing. I found a site somewhere that showed that 1600 is actually very low noise on the 450D but all cameras are not the same.

I use AS!2 instead of registax for the moon, it seems to give better results although Regitax is usually better for the sun.

I sharpen in Astra Image usually, registax does work well but more controls makes it harder or figure out what is happening.

White rings usually mean over-sharpening, I sharpen until they appear than back off, but Registax has a de-ringing feature that can help get rid of them.

[Steve Ward]

@Mr Spock @Cornelius Varley 

Evening gents ,

Might I be so bold as to ask the powers that be to please pin this thread to top of the Lunar Imaging section.

It takes me forever to find it on the regular occasions that I hunt for it in order to send a beginner a link.

Thank you ,

Steve.