May 23, 2018: 31-pane, 87 Mpixel Lunar Mosaic

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Grabbed 30 1000-frame SER files, stacked 250 out of each in AS!3, ran the lot in batch mode through sharpening in ImPPG, and added in the result of the 2000 frame stack of the Appennine region posted earlier. MS-ICE stitched the results neatly, and I am very pleased with the final outcome.

Be sure to inspect at full resolution!

Three mosaics in four days! Not bad at all. Pitty it was cloudy on May 22, or I would have a HUGE sequence of four days running

[Ibbo!]

Thats a biggie

very nice Mchael

[Pete Presland]

very impressive especially at full resolution, superb effort Michael. Any reason why you used MS-ICE instead of the usual Solar choice of Autostitch?

[tooth_dr]

Very nice, lovely resolution.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

6 hours ago, Pete Presland said:

very impressive especially at full resolution, superb effort Michael. Any reason why you used MS-ICE instead of the usual Solar choice of Autostitch?

MS-ICE stitches lunar mosaics fine, and can export them to 16-bit TIFF, so I can tweak curves and do other processing afterwards in ImPPG or Gimp. AutoStitch only exports JPEG.

[vlaiv]

Exquisite detail in full resolution image!

What gear did you use for this? I'm sensing a bit of unfocused light softening the image overall - it is most noticeable on the bright edge of the moon (right one, from top to bottom), and on some of the brighter features.

Could it be ED doublet?

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

9 hours ago, vlaiv said:

Exquisite detail in full resolution image!

What gear did you use for this? I'm sensing a bit of unfocused light softening the image overall - it is most noticeable on the bright edge of the moon (right one, from top to bottom), and on some of the brighter features.

Could it be ED doublet?

I always make these big mosaics with my C8. I am sampling the image at the Nyquist frequency, so some softness at full resolution is to be expected.

[vlaiv]

3 hours ago, michael.h.f.wilkinson said:

I always make these big mosaics with my C8. I am sampling the image at the Nyquist frequency, so some softness at full resolution is to be expected.

I agree that it is hard to recover all frequencies up to critical frequency (one needs very high SNR data), but the thing that I'm seeing is a bit different. It might be processing artifact, or a bit of unfocused light due to glass elements (barlow or SCT corrector, but I did not think those could have this much of an effect).

I don't believe it is seeing induced, and I don't think it is focus blur - given number of panels and imaging time I would expect those to vary and not produce constant effect.

Please forgive my close scrutiny of your work, this is what's been bothering me in otherwise perfect image:

Just trying to understand why it is there.

 

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

3 hours ago, vlaiv said:

I agree that it is hard to recover all frequencies up to critical frequency (one needs very high SNR data), but the thing that I'm seeing is a bit different. It might be processing artifact, or a bit of unfocused light due to glass elements (barlow or SCT corrector, but I did not think those could have this much of an effect).

I don't believe it is seeing induced, and I don't think it is focus blur - given number of panels and imaging time I would expect those to vary and not produce constant effect.

Please forgive my close scrutiny of your work, this is what's been bothering me in otherwise perfect image:

Just trying to understand why it is there.

 

I have seen the effect myself, and wonder what it is. I don't use a Barlow, so that is ruled out. It might be some internal reflection off the filters.used and the corrector plate. Maybe it is an artefact of the combination of the true PSF of the scope, and Gaussian used in deconvolution.