Moon from yesterday evening

[Bugdozer]

Here are some pictures I took with my Nikon D90 and Nexstar 5SE, going through a 2x Barlow. I haven't really got any idea how to join multiple views together so I have just treated it as a triptych!

These are all single exposures, around 1/30s at ISO 500. I tried stacking frames in Siril but they ended up with weird artefacts where it didn't align them properly. If anyone knows how to avoid that, please let me know! I then tried stacking in Astrosurface but although I have used that for video quite successfully, I couldn't figure out how to stack up raw camera files. So again, any info on that would be welcome.

[Roy Foreman]

Not bad for single frames.

Autostakkert is great for stacking images. Easy to use and produces great results. You can download it for free. Not tried it with DSLR raw frames but I think it will read them ok. Try to get a minimum of 20 frames per image.  As for stitching them together, any photo editing software that supports layers will do it. Photoshop is expensive, but lightroom is much cheaper and should do the job.  It is a bit of a faff and requires care and patience.

[Bugdozer]

20 hours ago, Roy Foreman said:

Not bad for single frames.

Autostakkert is great for stacking images. Easy to use and produces great results. You can download it for free. Not tried it with DSLR raw frames but I think it will read them ok. Try to get a minimum of 20 frames per image.  As for stitching them together, any photo editing software that supports layers will do it. Photoshop is expensive, but lightroom is much cheaper and should do the job.  It is a bit of a faff and requires care and patience.

I have Lightroom, so I will have to investigate trying that. 

I discovered why I was getting artefacts when stacking. The poor seeing was causing distortions between images. In one frame a crater would be a perfect circle, in another it would be slightly squashed vertically, in another it would be slightly squashed horizontally. The stacking seemed to be able to correct for this in a small area but across the whole image it doesn't seem to be possible - getting one bit lined up means another bit looks out of position. I don't see how I can correct for this unless the software can somehow "warp" the image to compensate. 

[Roy Foreman]

2 hours ago, Bugdozer said:

I have Lightroom, so I will have to investigate trying that. 

I discovered why I was getting artefacts when stacking. The poor seeing was causing distortions between images. In one frame a crater would be a perfect circle, in another it would be slightly squashed vertically, in another it would be slightly squashed horizontally. The stacking seemed to be able to correct for this in a small area but across the whole image it doesn't seem to be possible - getting one bit lined up means another bit looks out of position. I don't see how I can correct for this unless the software can somehow "warp" the image to compensate. 

That is the advantage of software like autostakkert  - it examines all areas of each frame a selects the best bits from each, so distortions are reduced or eliminated. In reality it is more complex than than, but you get the idea.

And it is free to download.

I think Lightroom has layers so if you are doing a mosaic the individual panes can be put on layers and blended at the joins to get a perfect match.

Lots to learn and it all takes practise, but there are loads of people here on SGL ready and willing to assist.

Good luck !