Moon imaging

[PatrickO]

I'm looking for advice on an inexpensive way to do detailed imaging of the Moon. Especially imaging individual features such as large craters and mountain ranges.  I've been doing lots of reading, but ended up getting more and more confused.

I don't have a telescope at present, but do have: Nikon DSLR, Baader Hyperion zoom and barlow. Also have an AZ5 mount.

I have the option to buy a Skywatcher 130P with EQ2 mount and motor drive for £100. Also wondering if a dedicated planetary camera would be useful.

Advice much appreciated.

 

Edited February 11, 2022 by PatrickO

[barbulo]

I'm far from being an expert, though here are my two cents:

Lunar/planetary imaging technique is called "lucky imaging": catch as many frames per second as possible to minimise the atmospheric influence. A dedicated camera is the best way to go, and they are not very expensive. ASI290 or ASI224 are good choices. DSLRs are better for long exposures (DSOs). 

Regarding the optics, SCTs should be a good choice. Bear in mind there is a magnification limit for a given FL, so not any barlow lens will match every scope.

Finally, you don't need guiding for lunar imaging, but you want a sturdy mount to prevent any vibration. 

HTH

[michael8554]

A dedicated Planetary Camera is ideal for those moon close-ups.

But your DSLR will also do if you take lots of fast exposure shots and stack the best, least fuzzy shots.

Cropping the result will probably give the same same size frame in pixels as the Planetary camera.

Michael

[happy-kat]

You can use Registax to process Moon images whether stills or videos, is fairly old now and free but works well. GIMP is free too and could be used for other editing of your images.

[happy-kat]

Do you know which 130p the telescope is? As the f5 one generally doesn't come to focus with a DSLR as there's not enough in fucus travel, could look at moving the mirror up or use a barlow which you might likely be doing anyway if imaging the Moon.

[PatrickO]

2 hours ago, happy-kat said:

Do you know which 130p the telescope is? As the f5 one generally doesn't come to focus with a DSLR as there's not enough in fucus travel, could look at moving the mirror up or use a barlow which you might likely be doing anyway if imaging the Moon.

It's a SkyWatcher Explorer 130P 

The OTA is marked f=900 divided by 130 makes it f/6.92 if I'm doing the sums right. 

[Cornelius Varley]

13 minutes ago, PatrickO said:

It's a SkyWatcher Explorer 130P 

The OTA is marked f=900 divided by 130 makes it f/6.92 if I'm doing the sums right. 

That makes it an Explorer 130M, not an Explorer 130P. The P in 130P refers to the parabolic primary mirror. The 130M uses a spherical primary mirror.

[malc-c]

22 hours ago, PatrickO said:

I'm looking for advice on an inexpensive way to do detailed imaging of the Moon. Especially imaging individual features such as large craters and mountain ranges.  I've been doing lots of reading, but ended up getting more and more confused.

I don't have a telescope at present, but do have: Nikon DSLR, Baader Hyperion zoom and barlow. Also have an AZ5 mount.

I have the option to buy a Skywatcher 130P with EQ2 mount and motor drive for £100. Also wondering if a dedicated planetary camera would be useful.

Advice much appreciated.

 

Patrick,  

I've just commented on a similar post showing examples between a typical dSLR  and some cheap webcams that were available at the time - rather than repeat the post and use up server space, have a look at the images here

[nfotis]

Hello there,

"inexpensive" and astrophotography don't go together usually 🙂

Fortunately, there are various options on shooting the moon.

If you want to shoot details as small as craters, you want a long focal length (at least 1500mm), perhaps even adding a Barlow lens.

The easiest way is to use a Maksutov scope like the Skymax 127 or 150, add a 2x Barlow and a planetary camera like the ASI462. It's not the cheapest, of course, but it's comparatively easier than other methods (you record a raw video of 3000 to 4000 frames, select the best and stack them).

If your budget doesn't allow a planetary camera, I think that there are programs like BackyardEOS and BackyardNikon which let you control your camera from your laptop and crop the live view to a video, which can be later stacked as usual.

Check with the field of view calculator (imaging mode) for the framing possible on the moon disk with various combinations of cameras, scopes and barlows:

https://astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/

N.F.

 

 

[malc-c]

5 hours ago, nfotis said:

Hello there,

"inexpensive" and astrophotography don't go together usually 🙂

Fortunately, there are various options on shooting the moon.

If you want to shoot details as small as craters, you want a long focal length (at least 1500mm), perhaps even adding a Barlow lens.

The easiest way is to use a Maksutov scope like the Skymax 127 or 150, add a 2x Barlow and a planetary camera like the ASI462. It's not the cheapest, of course, but it's comparatively easier than other methods (you record a raw video of 3000 to 4000 frames, select the best and stack them).

N.F.

 

 

 

Have to disagree......  When it comes to Luna imaging you don't need a 3000mm focal length or an expensive dSLR with video recording.

(Seems I have to repeat what I said in that other post ) - MS Lifecam - 720p can be had for £30 from Amazon.  Connected to a 1000mm reflector it will give decent images of the Moons landscape without the need for any Barlows

 

Take a few 1000 frames from the AVI and stack - Job done

 

 

[nfotis]

I suggested the BackyardNikon software because the original poster mentioned that he has already a Nikon

(presumably with live view capability - that's the way the software records RAW video from these dSLRs, using the 10x zoom feature essentially uses  a crop of the whole sensor)

N.F.

 

[malc-c]

47 minutes ago, nfotis said:

I suggested the BackyardNikon software because the original poster mentioned that he has already a Nikon

(presumably with live view capability - that's the way the software records RAW video from these dSLRs, using the 10x zoom feature essentially uses  a crop of the whole sensor)

N.F.

 

That's one way, but using cheap barlows to give a high magnification and then cropping a full image may not give the best results ?? - The OP would need to play about and see what works best, starting with his current equipment...  Last time I played about using stacked barlows to increase the focal length (and hence magnification) the poor quality and impact of adding additional glass between the sensor and the target resulted in a lot of aberration and artefacts