160 Megapixel Moon mosaic Mar 31st 2020

[wouterdhoye]

Hi everybody,

 

It's been a while but seeing was good enough the 31st to shoot another large mosaic. Below a summary description on how i came to this result. You can click on the tumbnails too show the full res image. But beware, these are pretty big files.

 

In total 32 SER-files 2500 frames each were recorded. using the CFF 300 f/20 Cassegrain, an ASI 174MM camera and a Baader 685 IR filter. 

 

Each file was then processed in Autostakkert! 3. Of each series 10% of frames were stacked with 1.5x drizzle. 

 

The stacked images were manually stitched together in Adobe photoshop CC.

 

 

The resulting image was saved as a TIFF file and processed in Lynkeos3 Here I performed Lucy-Richardson deconvolution. 20 iterations, with a 2pixel radius.

 

 

Final processing in Adobe Photoshop CC, this included high pass filtering, unsharp masking, cautious noise reduction and levels and curves adjustment.

 

 

Enjoy the image. Feel free to share your comments.

 

Clear skies, and good health.

 

Wouter.

[CraigT82]

Beautiful work Wouter. I can spend a lot of time planning around the full size image!  Well worth the effort. 

Just one question, so you drizzle all your images? 

[geoflewis]

That is an awesome final image Wouter and thanks for posting the interim processing stages. I'm very interested that you did most of the post processing after building the mosaic. Did you apply any sharpening in AS3!?

[wouterdhoye]

9 minutes ago, CraigT82 said:

so you drizzle all your images? 

Yes. But drizzle 1,5x only is worth the effort when you are slightly below critical sampling. (which is the case with my F/20 scope and ASI174MM) and it does nothing useful when seeing is bad either.

[wouterdhoye]

1 minute ago, geoflewis said:

Did you apply any sharpening in AS3!?

No, I use AS!3 only for stacking. sharpening is done in lynkeos and Photoshop.

[Miguel1983]

 wow, wat een detail 😲 

Wow, what a detail (see, dutch is like English) 🤓

[CraigT82]

41 minutes ago, wouterdhoye said:

Yes. But drizzle 1,5x only is worth the effort when you are slightly below critical sampling. (which is the case with my F/20 scope and ASI174MM) and it does nothing useful when seeing is bad either.

Fantastic... I really can't imagine capturing the whole moon at 6000mm FL!  I have never seen such tiny detail in a lunar mosaic before. I'd love to see it printed at full size and displayed, it would be enormous! 

[geeklee]

Staggering images as usual @wouterdhoye.  Such a joy to browse around in full resolution 😮

[WestCoastCannuck]

Fantastic work, and shared workflow Wouter.  Much appreciated.  I believe this is the largest mosaic I have ever seen!  lol

 

Very best regards

 

Mike