First lunar mosaic 2-03-2020

[don4l]

I've had 3 attempts over the past three evenings at capturing a mosaic of the Moon.  Last night I got a result that I am pleased with.  I do feel that I can improve a lot further because I have little experience at this, or the software used.  Any advice would be very welcome.

This was captured using Sharpcap,  a Tal200K at 2000mm and an ASI120mc.  The panels were assembled in Gimp.  A mild Registax6 wavelets was applied.

Thanks for looking.  Click for full resolution (4000 x 5000 px)

 

 

Edited March 3, 2020 by don4l

[geoflewis]

1 hour ago, don4l said:

I've had 3 attempts over the past three evenings at capturing a mosaic of the Moon.  Last night I got a result that I am pleased with.

Donal, you have every right to be pleased that image, it is lovely and a huge improvement over the earlier trial versions that you shared - you clearly are a quick learner 😉. There are a few very minor misalignments towards the south (bottom) of the image which reveal themselves at full resolution, so maybe you could fix those, but otherwise it is a very pleasing, crisp, but not overly sharpened image. Well done.

[paulastro]

Great job Don 👍

[don4l]

3 hours ago, geoflewis said:

Donal, you have every right to be pleased that image, it is lovely and a huge improvement over the earlier trial versions that you shared - you clearly are a quick learner 😉. There are a few very minor misalignments towards the south (bottom) of the image which reveal themselves at full resolution, so maybe you could fix those, but otherwise it is a very pleasing, crisp, but not overly sharpened image. Well done.

Thanks Geof.  I had some good advice - which really helped a lot to speed up progress.

I'm goin to work out a processing workflow before I go back to fix the alignment issues - otherwise I will be going round in circles.  I also need to figure out why Registax isn't really useable.

 

Hopefully, I'll have another go this evening if the sky clears early.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice shot, and very sharp indeed. I do notice a few stitching errors. You could try Microsoft Image Compositing Editor (MS-ICE, which is free), which does a great job of automatically stitching images.

 

 

[geoflewis]

14 minutes ago, don4l said:

I also need to figure out why Registax isn't really useable.

Are you trying to use Registax to process the raw video, or just to apply wavelets to tiffs out of Autostakkert?

[don4l]

47 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

Are you trying to use Registax to process the raw video, or just to apply wavelets to tiffs out of Autostakkert?

Just the wavelets.

The videos were processed in Autostakkert, which  has the "Sharpening" box ticked.

I did try the direct export tickbox to Registax from Autostakkert, but it didn't appear to work at all.  (Perhaps it was just taking too long.) 

I used Registax on the assembled jpeg.  The effect was too harsh, so I blended the Registax version back into the original at about 20% opacity.  This was far quicker than trying to adjust the wavelets sliders.

 

 

 

Edited March 3, 2020 by don4l

[don4l]

46 minutes ago, michael.h.f.wilkinson said:

Nice shot, and very sharp indeed. I do notice a few stitching errors. You could try Microsoft Image Compositing Editor (MS-ICE, which is free), which does a great job of automatically stitching images.

 

 

Thank you!

I do have ICE installed.  I'm not sure why I didn't try it already.  I'll try it on my next attempt - hopefully tonight.