First lunar imaging through my telescope.

[Aetherum]

In between the clouds, I greeted the waxing gibbous moon at 99% with the lens of my camera through an 80 mm achromatic refractor for the first time. I used an eye-piece adaptor with a 12.5 mm Plössl with an exposure time of 1/200. I'm quite happy with the result but are there any tips to get the moon even sharper?

[Luke]

Very nice shot!

Is the camera fixed in place? I'm not 100% sure on how your setup looks. If it is fixed so you can get consistent same photos, I'd suggest take multiple shots over the course of a minute or so, then stack them using a program like AutoStakkert (https://www.autostakkert.com/), and sharpen up the result. The stacked image will probably look a bit blurry but should have much less noise, enabling you to push the sharpening.

For sharpening, you could try ImPPG (https://greatattractor.github.io/imppg/). There's a nice little write-up on ImPPG here: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-resources/astrophotography-tips/a-free-tool-for-lucky-imaging/

Good luck with your lunar imaging!

Edited April 14, 2021 by Luke

[Aetherum]

Hey Luke, thank you for your reply!

 

My setup was fixed and I actually had multiple shots but I just used the best one. Autostakkert doesn't work on Linux nor mac, so I'd have to do it manually. I don't see the use of stacking here because the opacity settings would just take away from the original image, so the result would still be 100% either way. I used GIMP to post-process. 

 

Clear skies to you!

[wouterdhoye]

Hi,

congrats on a fine first image.

For a single shot and using an achromatic telescope this is for sure a very fine image. 

for getting best results taking many many images and stacking is the best solution. For what i's worth, you can get autostakkert to work on a mac using crossover (an emulator) and that works fairly good, (it does lock up once in a while)

Kind regards,

Wouter.

[Aetherum]

On 15/04/2021 at 09:23, wouterdhoye said:

Hi,

congrats on a fine first image.

For a single shot and using an achromatic telescope this is for sure a very fine image. 

for getting best results taking many many images and stacking is the best solution. For what i's worth, you can get autostakkert to work on a mac using crossover (an emulator) and that works fairly good, (it does lock up once in a while)

Kind regards,

Wouter.

Wouter,

 

Thank you! I'm sure stacking could improve the image, but with my last solar stacking experiment the results were rather contradictory. I will look into using autostakkert in Mac. However, I just downloaded SiriL as a Mac native alternative, but I haven't gotten into it yet. Any experience with that one?

 

Kind regards,

Robbe.