May 5, 2020: Biggest lunar mosaic so far, not perfectly sharp, however

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

I had a bit of a struggle with the equipment yesterday, so I think that caused me to miss perfect focus here, (should have swung to Arcturus to get it right with the Bahtinov mask). Still, I got 19 usable panes of slightly varying quality with the ASI183MC behind the C8. Apart from the usual flip mirror and filterwheel (set to UV-IR block) I added a little extra extension tube to reach F/12, which is near optimal for the ASI183MC. I stacked the lot in AS!3, stitched the results in MS-ICE, and sharpened the L channel in ImPPG. Recombining L with the A and B channel in GIMP, and some tweaks with curves gave me this (warning 155 Mpixel image)

Not as sharp as it could be, and I hope to get a rematch tonight

[WestCoastCannuck]

Your struggles with a 183 sensor and the C8 doing a mosaic mirror my own....  though you address them much better than I have to date!   I have yet to get a series of panels that are of similar quality.  Alas I am suspecting that is just the way of it for my seeing at my house.  Need to try on higher ground like local Observatory.  Problem is that the group there is really DSO....  and not usually nights are organized there during nice moon phases.

This file is indeed a monster to open!!  The poor website needed several attempts at opening file before it gave me the option to enlarge!  LOL   There are many areas of lovely sharpness at and near terminator.  A very nice work.   I hope to offer something similar one day.

Clear skies!!

 

Mike