Creating a moon mosaic?

[Tremolo]

I'd very much like to do this but I haven't a clue how. Does any one know of a guide or relatively straight forward instructions on how to do something like this?

[kookoo_gr]

its not that hard, the only thing you must bear in mind is this.

first you take the first picture then you move your mount a bit to another section but you overlap a small portion of the previous picture. finally you repeat this process.

a good trick in order not to have any gaps in your pictures is to take horizontal portions of the moon or vertical if you like.

finally if you can use the eqmod software with your mount you can use the addon eqmosaic

hope i helped

[tooth_dr]

That's how I done it, I made sure the camera was orientated so that moving the mount left or right (or up or down) made the image on the screen move exactly the same way. Then I started at the top and worked vertically down then across one, and up to the top again, and so on. As kookoo says, leave enough of an overlap too.

I used Imerge to join them all together, which works very well imo, but takes a little time. There is an auto mosaic maker in photoshop but I personally had no success with it, but it has worked for others.

[yesyes]

I've used Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE) for the mosaic stitching. You just drag and drop all the images into ICE and it does the rest for you. And, amazingly, it's freely available on the MS website!

Here's the result of my first attempt:

http://www.celestronimages.com/details.php?image_id=4773&mode=lightbox&sessionid=ssc8j4p5fpc4hkgsdfqn14v145

[michaelmorris]

The ICE software from Microsoft is very good and I would highly recommend it. Unfortunately, the last time I looked it was unavailable.

When doing lunar mosaics there are a few points I have found useful.

- If in doubt, take more 'panes'.

- Allow generous overlaps (at least 1/3 of a pane).

- The shadows at the lunar terminator can move quite quickly. Personally I always start by going down the terminator, then work my way across the disc in vertical strips.

- Do a couple of tests on the brightest areas and darkest areas you're going to be including in your final mosaic. Expose for the brightest areas . This way you'll hopefully avoid blown out highlights. If these leaves the dark areas too dark for your taste, try increasing the gamma-correction on the camera a bit (but not too much).

[Dave Smith]

Another vote for ICE. I have used it to stitch 120 frames successfully.

It does seem to be available now.

Dave

[Herakles]

Same thumbs up for ICE, just posted my first mosaic using it actually on the Lunar forum. Very straight forward to use.

[martin_h]

Microsoft Research Image Composite Editor (ICE)

ICE