10-11-16 The Moon, a mucked up mosaic and a few closeups.

[johnfosteruk]

And the world's longest post title.

Variable seeing yesterday evening, meaning there's a huge range of quality just between the mosaic panes. For some reason the mosaic hasn't blended at all well either. I couldn't match the levels region around Sinus Iridium with the rest amongst other problems.

Full disk is ok though and a few reasonably decent crops came out of the mosaic.

full disk is 100 frames stacked, normal process. 1/600s ISO 100

mosaic is 13 panes, 2.5x Barlow, 60 frames each at 1/120s ISO 200.

Full disk

Mosaic

Closeup 1

Closeup 2

Closeup 3

[xtreemchaos]

great shot John, very nice close up, i like the mosaic aswell. well done .  charl.

[Astro Imp]

Nice work John, the last image of the southern highlands around Clavius is a cracker.

Well done.

[johnfosteruk]

4 minutes ago, Astro Imp said:

The last image of the southern highlands around Clavius is a cracker.

Cheers. It's may fave too

[Davey-T]

Excellent images John, had a quick visual of the Moon a couple of nights ago with the 152mm, it makes a very nice lunar scope, will leave the imaging to others.

Dave

[johnfosteruk]

Very kind comments. Thank you. 

[spaceman_spiff]

I must have a got at this!

Edit: can't seem to spell go!

[johnfosteruk]

3 hours ago, spaceman_spiff said:

I must have a got at this!

 

Do it, I love imaging the moon, I've had a go at wide field, when funds allow I'll be getting some DSO going all being well but I'll always love Lunar.

[spaceman_spiff]

1 hour ago, johnfosteruk said:

Do it, I love imaging the moon, I've had a go at wide field, when funds allow I'll be getting some DSO going all being well but I'll always love Lunar.

At the moment, I'm seeing how much Lunar surface I can capture in a night with my narrow field set up. My first attempt was dashed because of the trees outside my house. Now I have found a better spot with a clear east-south-west horizon. I think I should be able to cover the terminator or a limb in about 1-1.5 hours. Can't wait to go out and have another try!

Dan. 

[johnfosteruk]

7 minutes ago, spaceman_spiff said:

At the moment, I'm seeing how much Lunar surface I can capture in a night with my narrow field set up. My first attempt was dashed because of the trees outside my house. Now I have found a better spot with a clear east-south-west horizon. I think I should be able to cover the terminator or a limb in about 1-1.5 hours. Can't wait to go out and have another try!

Dan. 

Best of luck with it mate.

[johnfosteruk]

I had another go at the Copernicus close up. Much better I think. Levels are improved, framing and sharpness too.

[Tyson M]

Nice shots 

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Great collection. What do you use for stitching? I find that MS-ICE and AutoStitch both handle variations in brightness between panes well by gain compensation.

[johnfosteruk]

1 hour ago, michael.h.f.wilkinson said:

What do you use for stitching? I 

I use ICE and Autostitch as well but neither of them coped too well with this one. I'm going to have another go though. 

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Just now, johnfosteruk said:

I use ICE and Autostitch as well but neither of them coped too well with this one. I'm going to have another go though. 

I must say I prefer MS-ICE on lunar data. I sometimes have to filddle a bit with curves (in ImPPG) to match the panes, e.g. if transparency varies. That usually allows matching them up better

[johnfosteruk]

Yep that's what I'll be doing. And I think I'll check I've cropped away all the stackimg artefacts at the edges. I'm sure I did but you never know as that normally gives ICE a hissy fit. 

[CraigT82]

Lovely images, I had a go at a mosaic with my 200p on Thursday night but missed a big chunk out of the centre .

I use MSIce but have tried autostich which seems to work OK but I can't get it to save anything other than a jpeg? Am I missing something? 

[johnfosteruk]

3 minutes ago, CraigT82 said:

but I can't get it to save anything other than a jpeg? Am I missing something? 

Nope. Which is a shame as it's a lovely little tool. 

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Regarding stacking artefacts at the edges: I set AS!2 to "cropped" for stacking surface images. Saves a lot of work removing problematic bits

[johnfosteruk]

Do you know that I  hadn't even noticed that option. Thanks Michael. 

[johnfosteruk]

I redid the mosaic, fiddling with curves to match the panes (There were no artefacts remaining) and ICE did the job.

Warning, big file.

 

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Very nice. Well worth the extra effort

[spaceman_spiff]

Here's my first attempt at a mosaic! Yes, I know I should crop the frames a bit before merging and I should image the Moon with regular overlapping frames but I got a bit ahead of myself . The frames near on the bottom left side are a bit lighter because of thin cloud.

Now I have an idea of the time I will need to collect the frames for a full mosaic. Given my frame size, I should be able to cover the Moon in about 62 shots. I try to take 4 mins of video per frame so that is just over 4 hours of imaging. Compared to imaging DSOs, that's not bad at all!

Details of Image:

Taken on 12/11/2016 with SW Skymax 150 at prime focus, Canon 550D movie crop mode, Each frame is 4 mins 640x480 (9'30''x7') (drizzled 2x) taken at 60fps, Processed using Pipp then Registax. The Mosaic was done in Gimp.

Dan