Shoooting the Moon

[philj]

The past few nights of the current lunation I have been using the 80mm F15 Towa to relearn lunar imaging. Being away from astro for so long Ive forgotten a lot of stuff so I decided to give this run of clear nights a go with lunar imaging and doing a bit of experimenting with technique and processing. I think I am almost there with this scope. Not sure why but I love the quality of image this achro gives. Yes my 127 APO gives superb almost colour free views but there is just something about a long achro, like vinyl and cd/mpeg, I prefer vinyl. I🙂

 

Using the Olympus OMD EM1 with its 4/3rds sensor the moon almost fills the sensor at this fl thus I get a good image scale. Ive been using the em1 for lunar for awhile with live view I zoom in 14 times to nail the focus. This time however I have been leaving the zoom on and watching for a still period atmospherically before pressing the shutter release. Only a small change but it cuts down on frame rejection in stacking. All subs done in Raw and mono to remove the bit of CA the F15 gives, if I use colour the sharpness suffers.

Processing, I used to do it all in Registax, and I suffered with large numbers of large TIFFS, so ran them through pipp this time, then Registax.

 

Then it was just a few tweaks in Photoshop - curves, contrast and a bit of sharpening.

Ive quite enjoyed using the old F15 again. I even put an eyepiece in and sat drinking in the views

Three nights worth, 29th, 30th May and 1st June

Click and click and click for full res

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 3, 2020 by philj

[Alien 13]

Lovely images and I agree vinyl is best but the cost can be eye watering for the top end stuff (makes any scope look cheap).

Alan

[nfotis]

Nice. How many photos did you stack in order to get this result?

Me, I am still limited to single shots due to a lack of a motor mount.

N.F.

 

[philj]

I took 40 subs for each on this occassiin, I used to take about 100 but I wanted to check this technique with the live view.

You can still stack with undriven, its fiddly but doable. Adjust the moon to be in the centre of the frame each shot. Not the best way, it can give aligning software a headache.