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49-Pane Lunar Mosaic from November 7


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Hi Michael,

Thanks for posting this nice panorama. It shows much detail, and the tonal mapping is very good!

Did you use a projection lens between the C8 and the camera, or was it at prime focus? I'm planning to use an ASI178MC on my C11 for color panoramas of the moon, so it should be a similar geometry as in your case.

Which program did you use for stacking?

All the best,

 Rolf

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5 minutes ago, Rolf said:

Hi Michael,

Thanks for posting this nice panorama. It shows much detail, and the tonal mapping is very good!

Did you use a projection lens between the C8 and the camera, or was it at prime focus? I'm planning to use an ASI178MC on my C11 for color panoramas of the moon, so it should be a similar geometry as in your case.

Which program did you use for stacking?

All the best,

 Rolf

Cheers, Rolf,

I use the C8 in prime focus, but the optical path is extended by using a Revelation R&P focuser, a Vixen flip-mirror, and a BrightStar filter wheel. I should be working at around F/11 or so, which is close to optimal for the small pixels if the ASI178MM. I use AutoStakkert! 3.0 for stacking, and AutoStitch for stitching.

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Hi Michael,

Thank you very much for the additional info! Interesting that you increase the f ratio just by extending the back focus. I would have feared that this at the same time deteriorates the image. After all, the optical system is optimized for a certain position behind the prime mirror. Your image shows that this cannot be too bad.

So far I did all my panoramas with the ASI120MM-S (3,75 micron pixels) at f/10. I found that the seeing must be really good for a larger f ratio to make sense. I'm planning to use my ASI178MC (with the same small pixels as your camera) for color work. Since the resolution will be much higher than up to now, I already mounted an ADC in front of the camera. Without it, atmospheric dispersion would limit the picture quality even if the moon is extremely high in the sky.

I agree that AutoStakkert!3 is very good at stacking moon images. The only issue I found is that you cannot do it in batch mode, because the green alignment rectangle has to be set manually to an appropriate place in the image. If it happens to be in open space, the program goes astray. I already sent Emil Kraiikamp a pieece of code with which AutoStakkert could automatically find the optimal position of the alignment rectangle. I hope he will incorporate it in a future release, so that I can finally switch from AviStack2 to AutoStakkert!3.

Best wishes,

 Rolf

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11 minutes ago, Rolf said:

Hi Michael,

Thank you very much for the additional info! Interesting that you increase the f ratio just by extending the back focus. I would have feared that this at the same time deteriorates the image. After all, the optical system is optimized for a certain position behind the prime mirror. Your image shows that this cannot be too bad.

So far I did all my panoramas with the ASI120MM-S (3,75 micron pixels) at f/10. I found that the seeing must be really good for a larger f ratio to make sense. I'm planning to use my ASI178MC (with the same small pixels as your camera) for color work. Since the resolution will be much higher than up to now, I already mounted an ADC in front of the camera. Without it, atmospheric dispersion would limit the picture quality even if the moon is extremely high in the sky.

I agree that AutoStakkert!3 is very good at stacking moon images. The only issue I found is that you cannot do it in batch mode, because the green alignment rectangle has to be set manually to an appropriate place in the image. If it happens to be in open space, the program goes astray. I already sent Emil Kraiikamp a pieece of code with which AutoStakkert could automatically find the optimal position of the alignment rectangle. I hope he will incorporate it in a future release, so that I can finally switch from AviStack2 to AutoStakkert!3.

Best wishes,

 Rolf

I actually just let AutoStakkert run in batch mode. As long as a bit of the surface is in the rectangle, it usually works just fine. On rare occasions I do one or two panes manually, but with 40-odd SER files I am not going for manual settings any time soon

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