November 9 with Edge HD

[StuartT]

Still trying to perfect my technique. These were taken with my Edge HD 9.25" at native f/10 on an Apollo M mini (4.5um pixels). Baader IR pass 685nm filter. Exposure time 2ms, gain 150, 67 fps, image scale 0.37 "/px.
Best 50 frames of 3000. Moon altitude 58°

Advice welcome!

 

Edited November 17, 2022 by StuartT

[neil phillips]

From your stats you should be trying F18 F20. If you want high FL captures. On the 9th it was showing in the high 50s (57 degrees) elevation. So with IR685 At native F10. even under disturbed seeing I would imagine the captures being somewhat sharper. They look good. And you're now avoiding over sharpening which is an improvement from what I saw before. But a little soft. Have you tried a touch stronger sharpening?

[StuartT]

11 hours ago, neil phillips said:

From your stats you should be trying F18 F20. If you want high FL captures. On the 9th it was showing in the high 50s (57 degrees) elevation. So with IR685 At native F10. even under disturbed seeing I would imagine the captures being somewhat sharper. They look good. And you're now avoiding over sharpening which is an improvement from what I saw before. But a little soft. Have you tried a touch stronger sharpening?

I'm def going to use the Barlow next time to get up to f/20 and see how I get on.

In Autostakkert!3 I am selecting only the frames with quality of 90 or over. This means I generally only get around 30 or 40 frames to stack out of a video of 3000. Am I being too picky? Would it be better to lower my quality threshold a little and stack more frames? 

As for sharpening, I have taken your previous advice and been a little less aggressive than I used to be, but perhaps they are now too soft! I'll tweak my Registax settings.

Edited November 17, 2022 by StuartT

[neil phillips]

1 hour ago, StuartT said:

I'm def going to use the Barlow next time to get up to f/20 and see how I get on.

In Autostakkert!3 I am selecting only the frames with quality of 90 or over. This means I generally only get around 30 or 40 frames to stack out of a video of 3000. Am I being too picky? Would it be better to lower my quality threshold a little and stack more frames? 

As for sharpening, I have taken your previous advice and been a little less aggressive than I used to be, but perhaps they are now too soft! I'll tweak my Registax settings.

Its finding your balance Stuart. Sharpening wise. one extreme to the other. Does look like it can take more sharpening.  As for stacking 10% is not too extreme in my opinion. I recently captured 10.000 frames per capture. So large stacks will be possible in the many hundreds. if the seeing isn't awful. Depending on your capture amount 3 or 400 frames is a given to me.. Also, much is dependent on exposure and gain. Last time i captured at 1/250/secs exposure. Gain quite high around 270 those figures need a lot of frames to control noise. Sometimes i capture at 1/125/secs exposure. which will need less frames as it will be less noisy. But your 30 or 40 is too conservative in anything other than low noise capturing. And great seeing conditions. Not what i had recently. though i may have over stacked my recent posts. I will experiment to see what i can cut them back too without noise. I hate noise. And wasn't prepared on my recent posts to tolerate it. Noise added into fine detail can look impressive sometimes, done well. But its false information. it's not real. There are many great lunar images. And imagers out there who take very low noise captures. With silky smooth surfaces, and plenty of excellent detail. Low stacks can work. but you need very low gain. and low noise captures to do it. two approaches. High noise high stacks. or low noise low stacks. The nosier approach works better under disturbed seeing under average UK skies. But both approaches work depending on where you are, and or conditions.