Lunar 3/10/2014 MR

[Blazar]

Ok, so here are the efforts from last nights wander over to MR. Also met up with another one of our fellow dodgers.

These are taken with the new ASI120MM-S on the Edge800 HD / AVX combo. Must remember to make a note of the number of frames in future. Capture software was OAcapture written by JamesF of SGL (Thanks James). May have overdone the wavelets in registax though....must learn ASI as well! anyway these are the first attempts. Thanks for looking (PS these are the large non ROI images.

Copernicus & Erastothenes

Copernicus, Eratosthenes and Archimedes.

Copernicus on its own (using the ROI feature)

Clavius (and all his little followers!)

Ptolmaeus, Alphonsus, Arzachel and Rupes Recta (straight Wall)

So not too bad for a first pass. There were a few more avi's, but looks like cloud may have ruined some of them. The workflow used was from OAcapture into ASI2 for stacking, then into Registax (wavelets), then into photoshop for any small cropping etc.

[knobby]

Nice ... love the straight wall !

[Blazar]

Think the camera is a winner...might head out into the garden tonight...think its the last clear night for the week.

[Luke]

Fab images, impressive from the ASI

[andynpage]

Wow! Excellent results you can really be proud of. I was out observing the same areas through my Nexstar 8SE. Great seeing! well done! I'm looking forward to meeting some of you guys when we eventually sell here in Surrey and move to Essex.

[andynpage]

Wow! Excellent results you can really be proud of. I was out observing the same areas through my Nexstar 8SE. Great seeing! well done! I'm looking forward to meeting some of you guys when we eventually sell here in Surrey and move to Essex.

[assassinse2008]

Superb results Blazar, it was great to see your setup in action , ill be sure to come down again when theres a future meet up

[Blazar]

Thanks gents for the comments. Will be good to get a crowd of us down there one evening. It really makes a difference when there are couple of people..standing in a field at night can be a bit weird sometimes (when the owl started off It had me looking all over the place!). It is really difficult though what with families etc. I did not get out last night in the end. By the time I could there was so much dew around, that it was a non starter (IMO). Not sure what the weather is going to be like this week (think its unsettled).

[Unicronicus]

The straight wall is awesome to see, as are the craters within Clavius. It's amazing just how different the likes of Tyco and Copernicus are between a gibbeous waxing moon and a full moon. Great pics man!

[JamesF]

I'm really pleased to see the capture application is working out  Some lovely sharp images there.  Always nice to see a good image of the straight wall.

I'd guess that you've pushed wavelets fairly hard and that's contributed to the blowing out of the brighter areas evident in the first three images.  That's what I get with my own images, anyhow.  I don't think I'd say you've overdone the wavelets otherwise though, so perhaps a bit less gain or exposure might help?  A bit of experimentation with different target levels on the histogram might be required to get the balance right.

I'm actually toying with the idea of allowing the histogram to be a transparent overlay on the image preview to make it easier to use (and to help with smaller displays).  For the moment I'm fighting with filter wheel support.  It's proving tricky to get my head around

James

[Blazar]

Cheers James. Will have to dig out the txt files to see what settings I had set for each one. Is the frame rate captured anywhere (apart from on the capture screen itself? Thanks again for the software though...great stuff.

Sure you will have figured out the filter wheel by the time I need it...8-)

[JamesF]

I think the frame rate is in the .txt file or at least there should be enough data there to work it out.  The first/last frame times (and the average frame rate calculated from them) look suspect to me at the moment.  I have a note to investigate that further.  There should be values for number of frames and capture time that are trustworthy though.  If you find something that looks like a bug, please let me know.

I'm really keen to get the filter wheel stuff sorted in time for the coming season's assault on Jupiter, at least to the point where I can test it for myself if I'm not confident enough to unleash it on the world.  Progress could not be described as "fast" however

James