Registax.

[Bizibilder]

Some of the bright areas on the rhs are a little over-exposed.  So, yes you could use a slightly shorter shutter speed.  The good thing is you are making progress - the stacked image looks good!

[NIGHTBOY]

Some of the bright areas on the rhs are a little over-exposed.  So, yes you could use a slightly shorter shutter speed.  The good thing is you are making progress - the stacked image looks good!

Ahh I was under the impression that its slightly out of focus due to the shutter speed being too slow.

[Steve Ward]

That's more like it ...  

Personally I  like to keep the ISO at 100 and adjust the shutter to suit , aiming for a 'darker' image to start with , you can always lighten an image afterwards but once an area is overexposed it's a nightmare to correct.

It also helps ( I find ) to go through the frames first by eye and eliminate the worst ones , i.e. those affected the most by the seeing.

[frugal]

Also I'm deselecting the ones which have warnings but at the end I'm still ending up with a blurry mess. Getting fed up of it now tbh,....

Don't worry, it isn't just you. Registax appears to more of a learning cliff than a learning curve.

I have been having all of the same issues that you seem to have been having. Thr one I seem to be having is that I get as far as stacking, it says it has processed all of the frames but jsut gives me a white screen...

The interface is not intuitive as to what you need to do next at any point. Although to be honest that could be said about pretty much every astronomy program I have looked at

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[NIGHTBOY]

Hmm doesn't the longer shutter speed cause bluring tho??

I'm using a non tracking 200p dob so a low shutter speed is going to create blur.

[jambouk]

I doubt there will be blurring at 1/1200th second; you could probably get a sharp image of a car speeding at that shutter speed. If you were taking a frame at 1/10th then the image may not be sharp as the moon scooted through the frame.

James

[NIGHTBOY]

Hmm its weird as through the view finder the moon was perfectly in focus.

Does anyone know why the auto align in registax has done such a bad job?

[Bizibilder]

The "blurring" may simply be the "wobbly Moon" due to the poor seeing we have been getting lately.

[NIGHTBOY]

Is there a way I can run a live feed out of the camera and display it on my laptop to ensure correct focus??

[Steve Ward]

Which camera are you using ... Canon ... ?

[NIGHTBOY]

Yes a 700D

[Steve Ward]

Just get a long ( 5m ) USB  extension and you can use the Canon EOSUtilities software that came with the camera to monitor the Liveview on the laptop , as well as adjust ISO , shutter speed and take the shots remotely .

[NIGHTBOY]

Ahh great. My laptop has hdmi but I think that's just an output. I just connected it to the tv via hdmi and it worked fine.

Whats the average number of stacked shots to create a great looking image then?? You're going to say hundreds arnt you...!

[Bizibilder]

I usually take around 100-130 and stack about 40-50.  It doesn't take long to sit there clicking away!!

[Steve Ward]

All depends on the conditions and the quality of the captured frames , 20 really crisp well focused frames will always get a better result than 100 iffy ones .

You may well have to shoot a lot more to catch those good'uns though , I used just 33 from 338 for my Solar disc this morning in awful seeing , other days it'd be 40 from 50 ... 

[NIGHTBOY]

Do you have the camera set to 'Continuous shooting'??

[Steve Ward]

No , single shot.

You can download a great program called APT ( http://www.ideiki.com/astro/Default.aspx ) that lets you control the camera as per EOSUtilities and also set a capture plan that will take as many frames as you tell it at whatever settings you choose.

[NIGHTBOY]

Ahh great ill sure check it out.

So what sort of shutter speeds can you get down too without causing blurs and keepin the ISO as low as possible??

[Steve Ward]

It varies to be honest , this is the sort of brightness I like to aim for to start , this was 1/200s @ ISO 200 with an 80mm scope.

The final image I ended up with was this ( made it into the S@N mag ...  )

[NIGHTBOY]

Cool. What's that about -1.2 on the exposure meter???

[Steve Ward]

Pass , I just adjust the speed til it looks about right with a test shot in Utilities ... 

[NIGHTBOY]

Surely tho, you'll always get a bit of blurring when stacking images because you can't get them all PERFECTLY in line with each other

[Steve Ward]

If you manually align carefully there is no "blurring" as such from Alignment just that from the atmospheric distortion that's always present to some extent.

This is "removed" with gentle use of the various "Wavelet" sliders that perform the sharpening and bring out the details , very easy to overdo the Wavelets though so small steps required.

It's difficult to describe what's "right" regarding this , but it becomes very obvious what's "wrong" when you overcook it , just have a play with the sliders until you feel happy with the result .

It's well worth saving the stacked image before Wavelets are applied , that way you can always revisit at a later date and try again if you want to.

[frugal]

My problem with Registax at the moment is that if I stacka dozen photos of the moon, the stacked image is worse than any of the individual images.

I have not managed to convince it to even process a video yet so I do not know how they will come out.

I am sure it is just user error, I just can not work out what the error is

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[NIGHTBOY]

Are you using registrax 5 or 6 frugal? I got rid of 6 and installed 5 as its much easier to get on with