A Trio from the 14-3-22

[morimarty]

A trio of images captured on the 14-3-22 with C11xlt Asi290mm Baader Ir685pass filter. Seeing Avg.

Moretus Mersenius Gassendi.

[neil phillips]

Hi Martyn nice shots though i reckon you could  get a tighter appearance reducing focal length a little. As Pete found out. Too much power may not be helping. 

Be careful with the smoothing used to remove noise. is also killing a little fine detail i think. I am not sure if that's what i am seeing but i think so. The worst of the effect is on Gassendi. Moretus looks quite a bit better. Showing some good detail

Edited March 17, 2022 by neil phillips

[morimarty]

Hi Neil I think you are spot on about reducing the focal length. I am basically using the same power train I use on the planets as I thought the moon might be able to handle it. I use a meade 2x Telenegative 140 screwed on the camera nose piece which is giving about 1.7x The next time out I will shoot the moon at native and work from there Thanks for the advice I really do appreciate it. Just on a side note I have seen a used celestron ultima would this be able to screw on the nose piece as the meade 140 does?

[neil phillips]

2 hours ago, morimarty said:

Hi Neil I think you are spot on about reducing the focal length. I am basically using the same power train I use on the planets as I thought the moon might be able to handle it. I use a meade 2x Telenegative 140 screwed on the camera nose piece which is giving about 1.7x The next time out I will shoot the moon at native and work from there Thanks for the advice I really do appreciate it. Just on a side note I have seen a used celestron ultima would this be able to screw on the nose piece as the meade 140 does?

Just hope i am helping. I think using Native will work well Martyn. It will sharpen up the images a lot. Like night and day a lot.  You could also try a 1.5 x drizzle. Then perhaps downsize somewhat. sometimes it works well. Chris go and Anthony wesley say that drizzle 1.5x produces a more accurate stack i haven't been able to verify that. But They are certainly worth listening to.

In fact at native FL your very close to ideal sampling Martyn with the 290mm and IR685nm. Your images of course will lose quite a bit of scale. But not resolution. If you like more scale. As i say a 1.5 drizzle might be worth experimenting with. Sometimes i also try a 2x resample on AS/3 then again downsize. To your taste.

Also rather than too much smoothing. Perhaps capture for a little longer. Get more frames. then you can use a slightly bigger stack to control the noise. Its better than the detail robbing and sheen effect of noise reduction smoothing i find. As for the Barlow the Ultima only unscrews from the body. Not the lens cell. So to answer your question. No i dont think you can screw straight into the camera. 

Edited March 17, 2022 by neil phillips

[morimarty]

Thanks for taking the time to reply Neil. You are defintely helping Lol. I will certainly take on board your advice as I never thought about drizzle. I've only ever used it once before as an experiment on jupiter and it seemed ok as I recall. I will also ease back on smoothing as I dont mind a little noise in a image. Regarding the ultima you have just saved me £75😀