First image - seeking advice

[AR86]

So after waiting for 2 weeks for a clear night, this is my first lunar image taken through my new/first setup. I'm using a 130PDS on an EQ3-2, prime focussed with a Sony A6300. I stacked the image in registax from 6 images, cropped in photoshop and am fairly happy with the result.

Apart from the left side of the image, the moon seems too smooth on the side facing the sun, is this just the result of direct light not causing shadows on the surface or should I be adjusting the contrast to try and pull some detail out of it?

Any other (constructive) criticism is more than welcome, very eager to learn more!

Adam

[Dark Vader]

Nice shot. Looks pretty good to me, first attempt or not, and way better than my first attempt was. I think you're right about the direct light and lack of detail. If you over do the contrast I've found it's easy to lose detail around the terminator. 

I use a mounted smartphone through an 8" dob and got this 2 nights ago. Single shot on auto through a 15mm BST eyepiece. All processing on the smartphone app, brightness and exposure down, and contrast and saturation up a bit. Similar to yours, there is a lack of detail in the direct lit areas. Hope that helps a bit.

[AR86]

Thank you, that helps loads. I really just wanted to check that I hadn't made a mistake and messed up on that side of the moon. I have to say that your image is amazing for a single frame - I would never have guessed that was taken with a phone through an eyepiece!

[Dark Vader]

Thanks, I've had some (lucky) good results with it so far, except for a failed attempt at planetary...overexposed white blobs.

Try having a play around cropping closer around the terminator away from the brighter areas. As long as your focus is good this sort of thing is possible.

[ONIKKINEN]

3 hours ago, AR86 said:

So after waiting for 2 weeks for a clear night, this is my first lunar image taken through my new/first setup. I'm using a 130PDS on an EQ3-2, prime focussed with a Sony A6300. I stacked the image in registax from 6 images, cropped in photoshop and am fairly happy with the result.

Apart from the left side of the image, the moon seems too smooth on the side facing the sun, is this just the result of direct light not causing shadows on the surface or should I be adjusting the contrast to try and pull some detail out of it?

Any other (constructive) criticism is more than welcome, very eager to learn more!

Adam

 

I hope you dont mind but i ran this image through Lightroom and Photoshop to extract some detail out of it.

I am certainly not a Lunar expert, but took a shot at this mostly for practice too.

I reduced highlights, increased shadows, applied texture, dehaze, clarity and a bit of sharpness to it in lightroom. In the end exported to photoshop, applied auto-color, a saturation boost to bring out the natural colour of the Moon with its different elements and ran Topaz AI denoise with high sharpening. Topaz AI denoise is not free and in this case had a very slight effect, but it is an effective tool if not overused most of the time.

The problem i ran into when imaging with a 130mm newtonian and a DSLR was that of dynamic range, which is a huge issue with the Moon. The bright parts are stupidly bright and the terminator where most of the interesting detail is, is quite dark. What you can do is expose for either of these, but not both. Then correct the one not exposed for in post. Note that you cannot recover detail from completely white clipped data! This shot is not white clopped, apart maybe from the bright craters but i always struggle with those too.

 

Extracting detail from the lit side of the Moon is always a losing battle, there just isn't much because of the angle of the sun. The fact that you can sort of see crater edges forming in your shot is reason to believe that you had good focus and a reasonably well exposed image. If anything you could use more frames to even out the issues caused by seeing and the atmosphere. The more images you can bother taking the better it will be, although with this sort of resolution around 200 or so will probably be close to the best it can be, if the conditions are average.

Its a good shot! If you take some more frames you'll definitely see improvements in the lit-side detail.

If you want to take something away from this: Try applying some of the Lightroom edits on the picture, especially sharpening. Sharpening really does wonders on Lunar full-disk shots!

[Dark Vader]

Strewth, now That's good... 👍

 

[AR86]

19 hours ago, ONIKKINEN said:

I hope you dont mind but i ran this image through Lightroom and Photoshop to extract some detail out of it.

...

If you want to take something away from this: Try applying some of the Lightroom edits on the picture, especially sharpening. Sharpening really does wonders on Lunar full-disk shots!

First of all, I don't mind at all, you've made a huge improvement to it and really given me an idea of what is achievable with that image so thank you so much.

On your point about exposure, I think I might have to try stacking/blending bracketed exposures to really get the best out of it, just got to wait for a break in the clouds

[AR86]

19 hours ago, Dark Vader said:

Thanks, I've had some (lucky) good results with it so far, except for a failed attempt at planetary...overexposed white blobs.

Try having a play around cropping closer around the terminator away from the brighter areas. As long as your focus is good this sort of thing is possible.

Just gone back through my raw images, I think I'll have to wait for my barlow to arrive before attempting to crop in that close as a good few craters in my data cover a 6x6 pixel area pretty much.

Image looks great though, thanks for the idea/inspiration