Full disk mosaic, Plato, Copernicus, Clavius and Tycho RGB shots from April 1st

[ONIKKINEN]

Nice elevation of 52 degrees but seeing was not so great that night at 2.5'' fwhm and an index of 1 forecasted. I dont believe the seeing index really seemed like it was so bad, but definitely not good seeing either. I think i was also too hasty with beginning imaging and there might have been some tube currents still. All with my 8'' newt and a ZWO ASI678MC.

Mosaic from 5 panels through the paracorr at f/5 and approx 1015mm focal length. Downsized to 75%, this one was definitely too early for the thermals to settle in the scope but it still works for me. Just 1000 frames per panel but still totals 40 gigabytes in the end.

Then Copernicus, with a new barlow: the APM 2.7x coma correcting one. Not sure exactly what the barlow factor is here with my adapter train but i am estimating somewhere around 2.3-2.4x based on some crater size measurements. Assuming i found the correct crater sizes of course. I think this one was a little bit too early too for thermals to have settled properly.

Then up next is Plato which i think turned out the best from all of these:

Then lastly the Clavius-Tycho region centered on nothing in particular. Just looked interesting when slewing around the terminator looking for something to shoot with a wider view.

Overall looks like the APM 2.7x barlow does fight coma quite well. Maybe the edges are starting to look less than ideal especially on the last one which has a wider ROI but its still miles ahead just a normal barlow or trying to get a barlow and a comacorrector working in tandem so turned out a good purchase.

[ONIKKINEN]

Fresh eyes reveal that these look a little bit too green on my second monitor and phone, so here are versions with slightly different colours:

 

[WestCoastCannuck]

Very nice.   I far prefer the colour from the first round myself!  They do not seem at all too green on my screen.   Its a tricky thing colour.  There is no right answer for the moon - all subjective.   Having said that,  I have the same camera,  plus a good QHY one shot,  and I can't get anything as good as these.   I will learn.   I don't have photoshop - maybe I will try paintshop pro.  Need to learn to use layers.

 

Great stuff!   Thanks for sharing!

 

Mike

 

Edited April 6, 2023 by WestCoastCannuck

[neil phillips]

Nice work. You got the shadows how i wanted them. Processing looks good to me . Did you do RGB White balance at capture ?

[neil phillips]

btw the colour on the first batches look best to me, the others a little bit bluer 

[Space Cowboy]

That Plato shot is really nice.

[ONIKKINEN]

9 hours ago, WestCoastCannuck said:

Very nice.   I far prefer the colour from the first round myself!  They do not seem at all too green on my screen.   Its a tricky thing colour.  There is no right answer for the moon - all subjective.   Having said that,  I have the same camera,  plus a good QHY one shot,  and I can't get anything as good as these.   I will learn.   I don't have photoshop - maybe I will try paintshop pro.  Need to learn to use layers.

 

Great stuff!   Thanks for sharing!

 

Mike

 

RGB lunar is tricky. It takes good colorubalance to be able to saturate the image so that any single hue doesn't overpower the image. Sometimes i do Registax auto RGB first, saturate bit by bit and then tweak manually later when the colours start to appear. It takes an insane amount of saturation boosting to get anything visible, im talking like +20 saturation in PS 10 separate times or something like that. Trying to go +80 saturation at one move will nuke the image for sure.

7 hours ago, neil phillips said:

Nice work. You got the shadows how i wanted them. Processing looks good to me . Did you do RGB White balance at capture ?

7 hours ago, neil phillips said:

btw the colour on the first batches look best to me, the others a little bit bluer 

I dont think i use any capture white balance, but really i have not thought about it and just let Sharpcap take the wheel. the CameraSettings.txt file that Sharpcap writes says this:

White Bal (B)=99
White Bal (R)=62
Brightness=3

So maybe there is some kind of balance? Really should know the answer, but dont.

Colour is a funny thing, i also thought the first batch looked nice on my main monitor but on my secondary one and to a lesser extent on my phone i am seeing a little bit too much olive green overpowering the image. It is subtle but its there, the second batch is without the hue but then i might have gone too far in trying to remove it and turned things too purple/blue.

[ONIKKINEN]

3 hours ago, Space Cowboy said:

That Plato shot is really nice.

Thanks, my favourite too. I like the texture surrounding the mountain range to the right, something i dont think i have seen in my own captures before.

[neil phillips]

Just now, ONIKKINEN said:

RGB lunar is tricky. It takes good colorubalance to be able to saturate the image so that any single hue doesn't overpower the image. Sometimes i do Registax auto RGB first, saturate bit by bit and then tweak manually later when the colours start to appear. It takes an insane amount of saturation boosting to get anything visible, im talking like +20 saturation in PS 10 separate times or something like that. Trying to go +80 saturation at one move will nuke the image for sure.

I dont think i use any capture white balance, but really i have not thought about it and just let Sharpcap take the wheel. the CameraSettings.txt file that Sharpcap writes says this:

White Bal (B)=99
White Bal (R)=62
Brightness=3

So maybe there is some kind of balance? Really should know the answer, but dont.

Colour is a funny thing, i also thought the first batch looked nice on my main monitor but on my secondary one and to a lesser extent on my phone i am seeing a little bit too much olive green overpowering the image. It is subtle but its there, the second batch is without the hue but then i might have gone too far in trying to remove it and turned things too purple/blue.

Was mentioning this recently. Just use the histogram line up all the colors in sharpacp. what i do is set blue to 250 full. then just line up green and red. you cant have a set number for this  except blue, because everything will affect it, from transparency to gain. All sorts of things, but as long as the colors line up you wont be far off. Having said that even default 50 50 50 can be adjusted by register or some other means to re balance it. But when i was doing it. lining up the colors at capture was  something i was doing. Regardless your color has come out excellent. Just excellent work through out here. well done