100 megapixel moon mosaic

[Yawning Angel]

After months and months of resistance I finally mounted my C8 rather than the 700mm frac for some 'proper' lunar work. I've always had a love / hate relationship with this scope: Love the focal length, hate the softness

Rather than give in, I did what any astro-imager would do and bought more kit! Electronic collimator and a steeltrack focuser. Then, because I like to punish myself, I tested it with a lunar mosaic...

13/04/22: Celestron C8, asi178mm, 642BP filter. 31 stacks of 500 each, 93gb of SER files boiled down to a 37mb 9455x10653 .PNG image

Stacked in AS!3, then Deconvolution, Wavelets and Curves in PixInsight. Background cleanup and format conversion in Photoshop

Click, and wait, for the full size (sorry)

The tifs ready and waiting

Much happier with the C8. It can stay 🙂

[neil phillips]

2 minutes ago, Yawning Angel said:

After months and months of resistance I finally mounted my C8 rather than the 700mm frac for some 'proper' lunar work. I've always had a love / hate relationship with this scope: Love the focal length, hate the softness

Rather than give in, I did what any astro-imager would do and bought more kit! Electronic collimator and a steeltrack focuser. Then, because I like to punish myself, I tested it with a lunar mosaic...

13/04/22: Celestron C8, asi178mm, 642BP filter. 31 stacks of 500 each, 93gb of SER files boiled down to a 37mb 9455x10653 .PNG image

Stacked in AS!3, then Deconvolution, Wavelets and Curves in PixInsight. Background cleanup and format conversion in Photoshop

Click, and wait, for the full size (sorry)

The tifs ready and waiting

Much happier with the C8. It can stay 🙂

Having done a hundred MP myself i know how much work it takes to do this kind of thing. I often run each section through PIPP first. do noise reduction on each piece before ICE. Its a lot of work. Not sure of your process. But even a quicker build is time intensive. If your bothered about softness Alex. Its piggy bank time. But other than that. 

Nice one on taking it on. A good result. Did you wonder if you had a bit missing ? i often run a series of 1000 frame sections as backup 

[Yawning Angel]

5 minutes ago, neil phillips said:

Not sure of your process

Thank you!

My process, for this one:

1. Make sure the camera to square to the scope axis!
2. Firstly I try to get the exposure right using a bright area. Having be caught out in the past by starting in the shadows then blowing out all the bright craters
3. Capture by eye, trying to maintain 1/3 to 1/4 overlap. Recapture anything the look odd - bird overfly, airplane, clouds etc. Had one of each in this capture set
4. Batch stack the frames with good coverage, manually stack the edge / corner frames (20% in this case)
5. Batch process in Pi: Crop 10 pixels off each side, Deconvolute then a tiny Wavelet sharpen and denoise
6. Batch Curves, enough to bring up the darker panels and make ICE's job easier
7. MS ICE for the mosaic, export as TIF
8. Into PS then mask off the background and curves to remove any stacking artefacts. Blend in with a layer mask
9. Adobe Camera Raw for a little extra 'Texture'

...and done 🙂

[Simon128D]

Outstanding work. I keep trying to do it myself with a C11 and keep missing a bit.

[neil phillips]

2 minutes ago, Yawning Angel said:

Thank you!

My process, for this one:

1. Make sure the camera to square to the scope axis!
2. Firstly I try to get the exposure right using a bright area. Having be caught out in the past by starting in the shadows then blowing out all the bright craters
3. Capture by eye, trying to maintain 1/3 to 1/4 overlap. Recapture anything the look odd - bird overfly, airplane, clouds etc. Had one of each in this capture set
4. Batch stack the frames with good coverage, manually stack the edge / corner frames (20% in this case)
5. Batch process in Pi: Crop 10 pixels off each side, Deconvolute then a tiny Wavelet sharpen and denoise
6. Batch Curves, enough to bring up the darker panels and make ICE's job easier
7. MS ICE for the mosaic, export as TIF
8. Into PS then mask off the background and curves to remove any stacking artefacts. Blend in with a layer mask
9. Adobe Camera Raw for a little extra 'Texture'

...and done 🙂

Thanks for the info. its good to see what others do. I probably make it harder for myself as i dont batch process. Old habits perhaps. 

Another way i find to keep levels even. is to use a histogram meter at capture. Each section reset the meter to 70 or what ever you consider is a healthy histo. It will for the most part. avoid any weird brightness or darkness. 

[Yawning Angel]

I had this interruption:

 

 

 

Edited April 14, 2022 by Yawning Angel

[neil phillips]

26 minutes ago, Yawning Angel said:

I had this interruption:

 

 

 

Its very cool. Because of your focal length. That was fast. I like the way the hi res captured the heat disturbance very clearly. 

I had similar a few weeks backs with a smaller scope

[Roy Challen]

Fantastic! Can't add any more than that.

[Kon]

That's really nice! You like a challenge, don't you? I though you would have learned from your sun mosaics (which are also awesome) 😉.

[Simon128D]

18 hours ago, Yawning Angel said:

I had this interruption:

 

 

 

Ha! I know a fella that has been trying to get a shot of a plane cross the moon for a long time. This would be the kind of thing he'd be chuffed about. 

Looking like it could be a clear night for me and you've stirred me up to give this another try, so I may just do so. Not much else to do on a night near a full moon.