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Moon ASI174 and Edge 8


Luke

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It's been a while since I got a decent lunar fix. Far too many bugs over winter. So it was very nice to get out for a bit last night, even if some pesky strong haze sneaked in before I had a chance to try longer focal length.

I think this is the first time I've used my ASI174 mono camera with my Edge 8 telescope. I like the fast frame rate. I stacked about 1,000 out of 5,000+ frames. Thanks for looking!

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30th April, 2015
Celestron Edge 8, ZWO ASI174 camera, red longpass filter

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Great images Luke!

I was going to say the third image was my favourite but then I scrolled down to the fourth. :D

They are all crackers though, looks like a good combo with the ASI174.

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Thanks, Jarrod, Steve, knobby and Johan :smiley:

Steve, I reduced about 5,000 frames to 1500 from PIPP, then stacked in Autostakkert. Then I sharpened and added false colour in Photoshop.

To sharpen I used multiple hits of Smart Sharpen (maybe 5 or 6 iterations?). I think it was strength 100%, 1.0 Radius, Remove: Lens Blur. I don't normally sharpen that way, I think it tends to get noisy fast and I was playing while waiting for Astra Image to sharpen, but it seemed to come out fine. Wonder if the large number of frames in the stack (over 1000) helped?

Seeing was okay our way, it had been decent for solar in the morning too, I guess we were in a calmer patch here? Some days it does seem to vary a lot over the country!

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Great results on all images Luke, some nice detail :smiley:

A technical note, as this plagued my last imaging session; you may notice that in your images the focus is much tighter to the right hand side than the left.  The other day when I was packing up, I noticed there was a bit of play in my imaging train.  I knew then that I would not get good results over the whole frame produced by the ASI174MM.  With these large format cameras we really need to make sure our set up is rock solid, or else we will always get these "focusing" problems. 

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Thanks, Jarrod, Steve, knobby and Johan :smiley:

Steve, I reduced about 5,000 frames to 1500 from PIPP, then stacked in Autostakkert. Then I sharpened and added false colour in Photoshop.

To sharpen I used multiple hits of Smart Sharpen (maybe 5 or 6 iterations?). I think it was strength 100%, 1.0 Radius, Remove: Lens Blur. I don't normally sharpen that way, I think it tends to get noisy fast and I was playing while waiting for Astra Image to sharpen, but it seemed to come out fine. Wonder if the large number of frames in the stack (over 1000) helped?

Seeing was okay our way, it had been decent for solar in the morning too, I guess we were in a calmer patch here? Some days it does seem to vary a lot over the country!

Honestly speaking I have never seen such sharp Moon shots. Wonderful !!! May I ask, what is "Smart Sharpen"? Does it some Photo shop function ? And one question more, how did you reduce numbers of rames (by means of which software)?

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Honestly speaking I have never seen such sharp Moon shots. Wonderful !!! May I ask, what is "Smart Sharpen"? Does it some Photo shop function ? And one question more, how did you reduce numbers of rames (by means of which software)?

Thanks, Rafal!

Yes, Smart Sharpen is in Photoshop. As far as I know, if "Remove:" is set to " Lens Blur" it uses a type of deconvolution.

To reduce the number of frames I used PIPP:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/133798-pipp-planetary-imaging-pre-processor-software/

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What is the advantage of using PIPP first?

I only really use it to centre objects but does it choose better frames than AS!2 does?

Good question, Jarrod! I have not really tested PIPP versus Autostakkert quality selection, I mainly use PIPP for convenience. I can e.g. take my 12GB captures and knock them down to under 4GB faster using PIPP, the stacking in AS!2 takes a while as I probably go a bit over the top with alignment points.

Also I often use PIPP to compress the captures already taken while I carry on capturing new movies, I think I tried Autostakkert and that slowed the capture frame rate quite a bit. I was surprised how well the capture went with PIPP crunching through the files.

It looks like with my ASI174 I get a little slow down while using PIPP so I am not always doing that with the ASI, but the Grasshopper 3 has zero slow down for me :laugh:

A minor thing but I figure getting both PIPP and AS!2 to dump the frames they least like can't hurt.

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Luke, these images are some f the nicest i have seen for a while, and there has been some superb imaging going on, sharp as a mother in laws tongue and superb colour tones

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Very nice images indeed. They are very sharp, but I do feel the sharpening has been pushed just a smidgen too far: smooth areas have a slight ripple pattern. Pulling back a bit should reveal the same detail without these ripples. Having said that the results as they are are inspirational. They might even inspire me to get the scope out for a lunar C8+ASI174MM foray.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi all, three more from this session that are a bit late to the party! I used multiple hits of Smart Sharpen again, this time I think I had Strength about 60% and Radius about 0.4. Artifacts are my fault, not the splendid camera's :laugh: And camera may well have been tilted. Thanks for looking! Luke

PS shot 3 in my first post up top was with my Equinox 120 from another night! :rolleyes::embarrassed:

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30th April, 2015
Celestron Edge 8, tilted ZWO ASI174 camera, red longpass filter, stuck down sharpening button

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Luke, really enjoying the images. I am glad someone is able to get out and catch some photons....I did go out last night, but was to see if I could get guiding working on my little star 71. Seems I can, now I just need to work with focus, was slightly out. Still not got the Quark yet....waiting for ever!

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