Moon 13-07-16

[johnfosteruk]

Stunning views visually last night right up to 224x with the 8mm & 2x Barlow (despite it being the cruddy skywatcher plastic, cheap, nasty... anyhoo), My alignment was good meaning that unusually for my eq2 the moon drifted very little meaning I could relax and take it all in. The seeing as others in some parts of the UK have commented was stunning and it was just a great night to be out.

After about an hour I put the Nikon in the barlow for some images.

3 panes, 1500 frames each, aligned in Pipp (not that it needed it), best 400 frames stacked in AS!2, sharpened in Registax, stitched in ICE. I'm quite pleased, although there's one gripe which is a dust bunny, no points for spotting it. I think I've enough overlap to get rid with a bit of cropping but don't have time this evening.

In order then:

The first image is straight out of Registax and I think is worthy of scrutiny at (almost) full size.

Next is an invert a la Charl!!

And an 'extreme' sharpened edition because I was trying to eak out some more detail in PS but overcooked it, but hey ho it's got something about it ***Public Safety Warning*** not worthy of scrutiny at full size, but it brings out a little extra ray detail hence the post.

 

[laudropb]

Very nice image. Lots of good crisp detail.

[Knighty2112]

Lovely set of images. Well done!  

[johnfosteruk]

Thanks guys.

I found time, evil bunnies slain and a slight reprocess as well, better? You decide, but it seems sharper around the southern highlands to me.

 

[xtreemchaos]

cracking Shots John, i nearly missed these, you should of shouted me, very nice everything, love them all mate, id like them twice if i could. thanks charl.

[johnfosteruk]

Cheers Charl. I didn't want to appear immodest I'm sure I can do a lot better ☺ 

[xtreemchaos]

you know me John, ive got me head stuck in the sol sec, i tend to miss loads in the other sec if i dont get before it moves off the main page. hope you have clear skys, nothing but cloud and misery here. charl.

[bennethos]

very nice pics. was thinking of starting out by shooting the moon too. not very much else I can shoot here in Brussels due to light pollution.

Care to let in a bit on which software you use to control your camera and shutter speeds/iso etc ? 

thank you !

[johnfosteruk]

So shutter speed isn't a thing. I captured video with a dslr in a Barlow lens in the eyepiece holder. If you're lucky and have a scope with sufficient inward focusser travel you don't need the Barlow lens. You want your frame rate as high as possible and because the moon is quite bright you can use Iso 100 or lower if you have it. I just set it recording in live view mode in the body itself then discard the shakey frames at the start and finish when processing. 

Then you 'stack' the video frames together using software. 

I (and others) use Pipp to produce an avi file which has the moon aligned in all frames. 

Then Autostakkert to stack it 

Then registax to sharpen and bring out the detail. 

Finish in photoshop/gimp or your graphics package of choice if you wish to make further adjustments to levels etc 

There's lots of proper guides and links around sgl. 

Hope that helps 

 

Clear skies