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My First Stack of the Moon


Mandy D

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This is my first ever attempt at stacking, but first, thank you to @Laurieast and @Steve Ward, whithout whose help I would not have managed this.

Last night was incredibly clear and steady and I grabbed 136 images of the Moon with the D800 through my Skywatcher 200P. I cropped and evaluated them in PIPP, then got Autostakkert to stack the best 50%, which according to PIPP were all above 90%. Final processing to adjust contrast, brightness and to sharpen was done in GIMP. I'm pretty pleased with the final result.

Moon_20220812.jpg

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That's a great starter Mandy ... 😀

If I might suggest ... when AS!3 has finished the stack , save the stack as a TIFF file and then open that file in Registax V5.  http://www.astronomie.be/registax/html/download_v4.html

The "Wavelet" function in REG  will let you do the sharpening in a gentle and more controlled way , as well as adjusting histogram , contrast etc .

It's another learning curve I know but one that's well worth pursuing , the main thing to remember with sharpening is "little and often" rather than a heavy handed approach , especially when using "Unsharp Mask" in GIMP.

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Just now, Laurieast said:

Awesome!

👍

Thank you! That means a lot to me. I couldn't have done this without all your help. Getting the images was easy, but it took a lot of figuring to get the software to do it's bit. Easier next time, I suspect!

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21 minutes ago, Mandy D said:

Thank you! That means a lot to me. I couldn't have done this without all your help. Getting the images was easy, but it took a lot of figuring to get the software to do it's bit. Easier next time, I suspect!

Your very welcome! Well on your way now, next time will be a piece of cake, it all looks very complicated to start with, but after a few goes.. 

I would definitely second all that @Steve Ward has said above about Registax. When you start out with it just use the top left slider and drag across to sharpen. 

Have a look at what it's like if you make it B&W/Greyscale.

Look forward to seeing the next one.

Edited by Laurieast
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7 minutes ago, Laurieast said:

I would definitely second all that @Steve Ward has said above about Registax. When you start out with it just use the top left slider and drag across to sharpen.

Just hitting it with the top slider is a pretty brutal start if I may be so bold ... 🙃

Firstly I would suggest setting the Wavelet Filter as per this picture ...

 

 

422850547_Reg5wav.PNG.5f4cf264a0a17c474ae56dacd260a9ef.PNG

This will appear to soften/blur the image but don't worry , lessening the larger radius of 4,5 and 6 will help .

I would then start with #3 gently until the image begins to show some detail , then repeat gently with #2 and finally #1 .

If you find the wavelet is not strong enough at any level then just up it to 0.09 and try again , conversely if it appears that it's too strong then drop back to 0.07 and repeat.

Unfortunately there's no hard and fast rules to adhere to , pretty much every session requires slightly different tweaks , the main thing to remeber though is "gently does it" .... 😉

 

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2 minutes ago, Steve Ward said:

Unfortunately there's no hard and fast rules to adhere to , pretty much every session requires slightly different tweaks

Interesting your going with the Gaussian filter, I do it with the Default 🤔

I will give that a try next time.  

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7 minutes ago, Laurieast said:

Interesting your going with the Gaussian filter, I do it with the Default 🤔

I will give that a try next time.  

You have little or no "finesse" with the Default sliders , then it's a bit like hitting it with a big Sharpening hammer which easily leads to ruining potentially decent images .

Was at that point ten years ago but soon saw the error of my ways ... :icon_jokercolor:

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Hi Mandy, great start - congratulations. It is worth remembering that a newt such as the SW 200P gives a coma-free image in a very small area - just a few millimeters around the focus. I noticed that while taking photos in the focus of my Celestron C8-N, with exactly the same parameters, the coma influence begins to be visible in the form of a slight blurring of some external parts of the image. I think this effect can be seen in your photo, which is definitely sharper in the lower part. I am writing about it because you may wonder where this sharpness difference came from. In my opinion, this is exactly the effect. Since I noticed this, I have been using a Barlow lens and taking pictures with higher magnification 🙂

Edited by astrolulu
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