First decent attempt at imaging - something close to home :-)

[Johnny666666]

Despite some reservations about the appalling mist and a bright halo around the moon I decided to have a go at imaging it. I've had a couple of tries at Jupiter before but this is the first time I've seen the moon since I've had the scope so I thought why not have a go? The results are better than I expected as I could barely see Polaris through the haze to set up the RA alignment.

It's only the third time I've used Registax, just following a basic tutorial I found on the net so nothing in depth going on here! Any comments would be welcome :-)

Skywatcher 150P on EQ3.2 mount with motor drives. GH3 camera at prime focus, no filters. 500 best frames from the best 1500 selected from just over a minute of Full HD video recorded. I think it was ISO 400 at about 1/500th shutter speed although I'm not sure, sorry.

[Johnny666666]

Erm... I did upload a 1920 x 1080 image (a 1:1 scale from the GH3 and output from Registax) but the forum seems to have reduced this somewhat. Not sure if there is a limitation on the image size or not, but it looks a bit better at Full HD size!

[guiseppe]

That is a great shot. Never heard of a GH3 though, but it seems to be working quite well.

[GuillermoBarrancos]

That is a great shot. Never heard of a GH3 though, but it seems to be working quite well.

A Panasonic Lumix G-series camera.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Very nice shot. The subtle colours of the moon come out well, and the focus looks spot on

[AstroAdam]

Lovely - love any moon pic that highlights the colours...

[Stargazer33]

Very nice image. Focus and exposure look spot on. As said previously it's nice to see a Moon shot with the colours showing. Well done!

[Astrosurf]

Brilliant shot!

Alexxx

[Langy]

Excellent, now I thought I had improved well and can now see I have another big step to go.

Well done. 

[Johnny666666]

Thanks everyone, it's all a massive learning curve and I tried to hold back on the wavelet sharpening in Registax (still very new to me too!)

The GH3 is a Panasonic micro four thirds camera, not ideal for astrophotography but it's great as a video camera, which was what I bought it for. The good thing about it is because it's a 'DSLR' without a mirror the sensor is quite forward in the camera body - only about 15mm from the mounting flange - if only I could find a low profile T-mount for it 

As an aside, the best quality movie files produced are in MOV format, which I can't use in Registax. I had to import the MOV file into Sony Vegas movie editing software to create an AVI file but Registax didn't like the codec! I ended up outputting the frames I needed as a BMP sequence (1500 per minute of footage) then imported these into Registax. Seems to work well enough and there's no recompression in the BMPs.

Onwards and upwards