Pixelated Moon

[Lee_P]

Hi SGL folks,

I'm a deep sky imager (Askar FRA400 and ASI2600MC), and the other night decided to do some lunar imaging while waiting for the Orion Nebula to come out from behind my chimney. Using my ASIAIR PRO, I took an .avi video (1920x1080). I ran this through PIPP to get TIFs, which I then loaded into Registax. The images look very pixelated, as does my final edit. Below are examples. My question is, are the images pixelated because of my telescope and camera combination (i.e. it's to be expected because I'm using a wide-field rig for lunar); or have I done something wrong in my pre-processing?

Thanks in advance!

 

 

 

[symmetal]

Did you tell PIPP to debayer the images as one of the options on the 'Input Options' tab. This is the kind of result you get if you align OSC images without debayering first.

Alan

[Lee_P]

5 minutes ago, symmetal said:

Did you tell PIPP to debayer the images as one of the options on the 'Input Options' tab. This is the kind of result you get if you align OSC images without debayering first.

Alan

Thanks Alan, I did, but possibly incorrectly. Thinking about it, Registax did say that it thought the TIFs were monochrome, which perhaps is a red flag that I messed up the debayering. Here's a screenshot of my settings:

[symmetal]

That looks like it's right though perhaps a different debayer pattern needs to be used. Not all programs seem to treat the patterns like RGGB the same. Normally clicking the test options button tells you if the pattern is wrong but with the moon being pretty much mono it's not obvious though viewing it at full scale could show a noticeable pixel brightness pattern when it's wrong. Also do you have to tell PIPP to save in a colour format tiff as well. I haven't got the program with me at the moment to check. Registax saying it's mono does imply the tiff file only has one layer rather than three.

Alternatively you can use Autostakkert which will take your avi file directly and process it fully, without having to go via tiffs, and registax.

Alan

Edited January 25, 2021 by symmetal

[Lee_P]

13 hours ago, symmetal said:

That looks like it's right though perhaps a different debayer pattern needs to be used. Not all programs seem to treat the patterns like RGGB the same. Normally clicking the test options button tells you if the pattern is wrong but with the moon being pretty much mono it's not obvious though viewing it at full scale could show a noticeable pixel brightness pattern when it's wrong. Also do you have to tell PIPP to save in a colour format tiff as well. I haven't got the program with me at the moment to check. Registax saying it's mono does imply the tiff file only has one layer rather than three.

Alternatively you can use Autostakkert which will take your avi file directly and process it fully, without having to go via tiffs, and registax.

Alan

Thanks Alan. I tried every combination in Registax, but no joy. So I tried Autostakkert as you suggested, and it worked first time

[symmetal]

Glad you got a good image in the end Lee. 😀 Another useful program for enhancing your final stacked image is Imppg. Its deconvolution results are very impressive in sharpening the image, compared to other programs, without making it look 'overprocessed'

Alan