Processing daytime Moon images with PIPP

[JamesF]

I guess this may be more targeted towards Chris, but the answer(s) will be useful to people other than me, hence the public post...

I'm trying to process daytime Moon images in PIPP, but I think probably because of the lack of contrast, PIPP is having trouble finding anything in the image (could be down to the background being so blue, too?). I'd be grateful for any ideas about configuration to help PIPP find the target and not throw away all of my frames...

James

[Steve Ward]

Mk One eyeball always works for me . . .

[cgarry]

Hi James,

Funny you should ask about this, I am working on something that might just help. Do you have a raw file that I can get hold of to try it out?

Another approach (available with the current version of PIPP) is to generate the monochrome channel from just one of the colour channels instead of combining all colour channels. By selecting the Red red channel you would probably get more contrast than the old mono-from-RGB method would give as the blue would not be taken into account. As an aside, I have found this approach further helps Reg 6 with its alignment for lunar/solar images.

Cheers,

Chris

[JamesF]

I'll sort out a file for you as soon as things calm down a bit, Chris And I'll have a go at stacking the red channel, as you suggest.

James

[cgarry]

Thanks James.

The other approach (actually the approach I usually recommend) is to set the object detection threshold manually. To do set the following options:

Processing Options->Object Detection->Auto Minimum Pixel Value = Unchecked

Processing Options->Object Detection->Minimum Pixel Value When Auto Is Not Selected = XXX

A bit of trial and error should allow a XXX value to be determined that is higher than the background level so that the moon can be detected.

The changes I am working on now should make this manual intervention unnecessary, but this should work for now.

Chris