Reconstruction worker wanted

[Ben the Ignorant]

I made a lot of eclipse shots that turned out too dark because my Samsung phone camera is not sensitive enough (400 ISO), but treating these shots as deep sky images, stacking them and doing the processing magic, is it possible to make a few presentable views? 

If someone is willing to try - no need to lose sleep over it - I'm posting the images by groups. Each group contains pics made seconds or tens of seconds from each other, not sure if the slight differences will make processing too hard. They were made with a Celestron 5 and an Explore 24/68 eyepiece. Focus seems to be accurate.

 

First group

 

Second group

 

Third group

 

Fourth group

 

Fifth group

 

Sixth group

 

Seventh group

 

Last group

[johnfosteruk]

I reckon I can get something out of them for you. I’ll have a go this evening. 

[Ben the Ignorant]

Thanks a lot! Can't wait!

[johnfosteruk]

That was well worth the effort

Here's the first one, I'm doing the rest now.

I stacked them, then stretched the image and applied a little sharpening and noise reduction. The second image is with the same post processing applied to one of the single images without stacking, just so you know it was worth it

 

[johnfosteruk]

number 2, there were only 6 in this batch and I could only get 5 to stack.

 

[johnfosteruk]

This is the last one (fifth group), the rest didn't stack well and being small batches didn't gain much in doing so. This one is a stunner though, even with the artefacts 

[Ben the Ignorant]

Wow, the single image is grainy! Machine gunning with the camera is a must! I'm glad I didn't get frostbite on one hand for nothing. I could wear a glove on the left hand but the right one had to operate the phone, so blood poured from the dried skin; that was no doubt the coldest night in the whole unfinished winter.

But against all habits of nature, the air was very stable, normally a cold winter night brings very agitated air. Maybe that helped a bit, together with checking the focusing carefully. Also, strictly by luck, the most appropriate window for shooting the eclipse made the tracking precise enough. The C5 was in tabletop mode, resting on the window sill, which forced its polar axis to point roughly to true north.

I don't know what exposure times the camera chose but if they were large fractions of a second, some trailing could have blurred the image at 62x. None of that happened thanks to the good orientation.

My brothers think they have seen the good eclipse pictures, now I'm gonna send them the really good ones! Thanks.

[geoflewis]

Hi Ben,

Seeing what John was able to do, I thought I'd have a go at series 5 too...

Cheers, Geof

[Ben the Ignorant]

1 hour ago, geoflewis said:

Seeing what John was able to do, I thought I'd have a go at series 5 too...

Nice, I saved that picture, too. Some little dark artefacts show up but overall it is smooth. Looks like my pics were too dark or too few but stacking and processing made the most of the material. Also, my phone alters colors when it's not working at the nonimal 100 ISO (green is incredibly boosted) so the single and stacked images are pinkish. The true eclipse was definitely a brownish dull copper tone, which I remember more easily because of purple flashes in the binoculars while I watched it.

I don't know what was going on but a couple emergency vehicles were on standby at the other edge of the block during totality (responding to a werewolf attack?), and their electric blue lights were strong enough to cast a circle around the viewing field in my binoculars. They staid there for an hour, luckily my C5 has an oversize 20cm dewshield so that didn't ruin any photos. You never know what strange things will occur for real when you try to plan for an observing session!  

[geoflewis]

10 minutes ago, Ben the Ignorant said:

Some little dark artefacts show up but overall it is smooth. Looks like my pics were too dark or too few but stacking and processing made the most of the material.

Yes, I probably pushed the sharpening and gamma adjustments in Registax too far, but as you say it cxame out not too bad from a very small data pool.

[Ben the Ignorant]

What if you stack ALL the pictures that don't have a lot of white?