Razor Sharp images of the moon??

[NIGHTBOY]

Hi guys.

I've just taken 6300 frames of the moon, put them through PIPP and enabled Quality Estimation and it gave me 1200 back.

I've then stacked with Registax and put the Lowest quality at 95 and Its gave me a stack size of 22.

Whats the best way to go about getting the image HD razor sharp??

Would it be best to get it looking as good as I can using the Wavelets and then putiing the image into Photoshop and using something like Smart Sharpen???

I'm using Photoshop CS2.

Thanks in advance.

[cgarry]

How are you capturing you moon images?  I assume they are not raw images from a DSLR as that is a lot of frames!

Does each frame contain the complete moon?  How big is each frame?

Note that PIPP's 'Solar/Lunar full disc' options changes the quality setting to the 'Total Brightness' algorithm, this is to allow cloud affected frames to be removed rather than to select sharp frames.

Cheers,

Chris

[Leveye]

Smart sharpen.

[NIGHTBOY]

Hi Chris. Yes I'm using my Dslr in video mode and capturing them as an .MOV file. It was around 4 minutes of footage.

[LouisJB]

will this technique give a much better image than a single full res high shutter speed image? I thought the stacking was really for high mag small targets like planets where seeing really makes a big difference and stacking is needed to null out seeing. I say this because even HD video is normally a much lower res than full DSLR images, which are typically 20Mpixel+ these days.

I'd be interested to see your results and if you get an improvement

[NIGHTBOY]

Yes that would be interesting.

Tho I have read of people taking approx 4000 frames and stacking 1000 with great results. I'm unsure of why registax iss only letting me stack 22 out of 1200 good frames from Pipp??

[narrowbandpaul]

the atmosphere twinkles at scales around the few tens of ms. By taking a lot of very short exposures you are hoping to get lucky and catch a few where the atmosphere is very steady, so that you reach the diffraction limit of the telescope. 

The more you take the more selective you can be. With 6300 frames I would have thought a few would show almost no signs of being affected.

I would be very selective and only stack the best few.

As for averaging out seeing conditions, well that's not my understanding.

The term isoplanatism refers to the angular patch of sky where the effects of twinkling are correlated. This can be just a few arcsecond, ie within the disk of jupiter. What this means is that the atmosphere is composed of little cells that have an angular size roughly equal to the isoplanatic angle. So just because one part of jupiter say was sharp doesnt mean that another part is. whether it is or not depends on wavelength, the value of the fried parameter and the height of the atmosphere causing the twinkling. Stacking these wont necessarily increase the resolution or reduce the seeing

By being selective I think you are really looking for  an image where all of jupiter is unaffected by seeing. The probability of this is very low, so you have to be very selective. Thats the way to resolution

Paul

[cgarry]

Hi Chris. Yes I'm using my Dslr in video mode and capturing them as an .MOV file. It was around 4 minutes of footage.

I would probably not use quality selection in both PIPP and RegiStax.  If you give RegiStax 1200 similar good frames then it is hard for RegiStax to select frames.

I would not use the DSLR movie approach, but would take about 120 raw images, run these through PIPP and stack the resulting TIFF images.  The moon is a nice bright target so you don't need thousands of frames to lower the noise.

Cheers,

Chris

[cgarry]

This is the technique I would use:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/184192-full-disc-lunar-imaging-with-a-dslr/

Cheers,

Chris

[Steve Ward]

Focus , focus , focus .... nail that and the rest comes easy .

You cannot get crisp sharp images by waveletting or sharpening out of focus subs ,  once you're sure of focus you WILL capture some crisp frames in a set shot , it all depends on the seeing as to how many and how often they occur.

It can be a frustrating exercise at times but stick with it , you'll get much better results stacking 20 really good single frames than 100 poor ones.

[lensman57]

Hi guys.

I've just taken 6300 frames of the moon, put them through PIPP and enabled Quality Estimation and it gave me 1200 back.

I've then stacked with Registax and put the Lowest quality at 95 and Its gave me a stack size of 22.

Whats the best way to go about getting the image HD razor sharp??

Would it be best to get it looking as good as I can using the Wavelets and then putiing the image into Photoshop and using something like Smart Sharpen???

I'm using Photoshop CS2.

Thanks in advance.

Hi,

There is only one way of getting sharp images in AP as with other branches of photography, sharp in, sharp out. If your seeing is good and the focus is spot on you will get sharp images out of the stack, from there on you can decide wether  to apply sharpening or decon with or without lum mask to sharpen up the detail without increasing the noise. If your S/NR is weak and you try to sharpen all you get is pixelation and noise. Over sharpening also robs the image of subtle detail as the contrast increases, a natural look is much more preferable to an HD one IMHO.

Regards,

A.G

[LouisJB]

yeah from my limited experience taking a number of RAWs with absolutely nailed focus should yield one good shot in say 10 or 100. Whether that single shot would be improved by further stacking, maybe, but I doubt by much. The moon is mega bright, there will be little noise to reduce. Most of the issues will be seeing and focus, focus being absolutely critical.

From a single best RAW, there are ways to sharpen in Photoshop that work well.

Still, be interested in what can be achieved with stacking, if it makes an improvement I'll have to give it a go. Although most DSLRs will not shoot high speed AND full-res RAW, just think of the data and the bandwidth you'd need to write to the memory card!

[NIGHTBOY]

Ok this is the image I got after taking the 1200 images from pip and staking the full 1200 in registax. I only moved the 1st slider on wavelets 1/4 of the way along.

And after photoshop...

[lensman57]

Ok this is the image I got after taking the 1200 images from pip and staking the full 1200 in registax. I only moved the 1st slider on wavelets 1/4 of the way along.

And after photoshop...

These are excellent, I really like them. well done.

A.G

[NIGHTBOY]

Thanks lensman.

I'm sure tho I can get more detail (somehow!!!)

I'm just trying JamesF's settings in Pipp, though I'm still using my video footage. I will then stack the Images in Registax with the lowest quality at 95% and put the results on here.

[LouisJB]

very good indeed! be interested to see your best single shot as a comparison (RAW image).

What telescope and camera are you using?

[NIGHTBOY]

very good indeed! be interested to see your best single shot as a comparison (RAW image).

What telescope and camera are you using?

Hi Louis.

Sykwatcher 200p dob and a canon 700D.

[todd8137]

Thanks lensman.

I'm sure tho I can get more detail (somehow!!!)

I'm just trying JamesF's settings in Pipp, though I'm still using my video footage. I will then stack the Images in Registax with the lowest quality at 95% and put the results on here.

Does James use a dslr am sure he does not

Pat

[NIGHTBOY]

Does James use a dslr am sure he does not

Pat

If you looks at JamesF's thread via cgarrys link it says 'With a DSLR'.

[NIGHTBOY]

Ok this is with Enable Quality estimation ticked, Recorder frames in order ticked, Only keep best quality frames ticked and numer of frames to keep set to 1000. So 6667 frames went in a 1000 came out.

Then in Registax I set the 'Lowest Quality' to 90% and this gave me a stack size of 100 frames.

I then moved the first slider only in wavelets 1/4 of the way along.

This is an image I am very very happy with.

for best results view here http://www.flickr.com/photos/107065326@N07/11824858155/

[todd8137]

I stand corrected sir ,but just to add a foot note from a lunar fanatic and imager ,I have tried use in both my Dslr's as a test and did not rate it but it's a great great way to get started ,and the lessons learned will stand well have you thought about getting hold of a web cam ?

Heres a link to some of the common web cams you may find useful

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/molyned/web-cameras.htm

Pat

[riklaunim]

The solution for sharp and clear lunar images is a good mono camera and (bright) infrared filters plus not to high resolution for given telescope (to avoid light diffraction artifacts). Those old webcams aren't good for that.

[Moonshane]

my understanding of how the main guys get such stunning results is that they take lots of full frame images of the same small area and then stack them. these stacked sharp images of a small area are then stitched together to form a 'patchwork quilt' of ultra sharp images.

[NIGHTBOY]

yes I've looked into the webcam route but I've read a tracking mount is needed. Sadly, I don't have one.

[frugal]

That is a cracking shot. You have come a long way from the first attempt a couple of months ago.