Moon 01/01/10 01:00 on CCTV

[MishMich]

Having only had a dim view of the moon through cloud, just able to make out the chunk missing in the SE, there was a break in the cloud which dragged me away from Jools after midnight to try out the second-hand Meade 5" refactor with the CCD CCTV camera & HDD/DVD recorder setup I have been putting together. No sooner than I finished setting up and got Mars in my sights, and the cloud rolled in. The moon was still bright, and I thought I'd try out the camera out on that. Despite the cloud, I was able to image through it, still needing a lunar filter (plus fringe killer & skyglow/IR-cut). In all I filmed for nearly ten minutes, until the cloud became too thick, covering the moon

The result was a 15,000 frame HDD recording, which was transferred to DVD, and converted to BMPs using VOBFrameExtractor. 29 clear sections were selected from the BMPs. Each usable selection consisted of up to 350 frames, of which the best 150 (appx, +/- 50) of each were stacked individually in registax and wavelets, gamma, enhancements applied at the same levels. The resulting stacks were saved as TIF format, and merged in three passes in Photoshop Elements, then colour curves applied. The final image in TIF format is 25MB. This is a JPEG of the result.

It is not without flaws - but considering cloud could be seen drifting across every frame during the stacking process, I am quite pleased with the result, and it helps make up for not having been able to do this with the partial eclipse. Ten minutes to film, much longer to process. This suggests to me that the CCTV camera/HDD recorder approach can yeild results.

(Please note that following comments about the appearance of the North Pole, I stacked the 29 frames again, manually, in iMerge, with feathering, and replaced the original image with the updated image, as follows...)

[Herakles]

Thats picked up some great detail there. Love to see that setup used on a terminator image , reckon it would be ace mate.

[johnh]

Excellent result with beautiful contrast. John.

[MishMich]

Somebody elsewhere has commented about the effect on the North, which isn't quite correct. I think this was introduced in the photoshop stage. I've not seen any way of achieving a mosaic using other software I have (Registax or DSS) for a lunar image. The problem with PSE7 is it only lets you merge 10 frames at a time - so I had to do S-centre-N, followed by E and then adding W to the result. Is there better software freely available for stitching a mosaic like this together?

M.

[MishMich]

I have replaced the original image, merged using PSE7, with a new copy merged using iMerge.

M.

[ringz]

Lovely pic MishMash.

--

Martyn

[Scott Tilley]

Hello MishMash, superb image!

Scott

[PH-R]

Wow that is a great image!

[oceanheadted]

Lovely image, well done!

[astropete]

that is one image to be proud of.

[MishMich]

Following Herakles' comment, I managed to capture the terminator on the night of 3rd/4th. This was done using the CCTV/HDD rig, but using the f6 SPX 200 & 2x barlow. It is made up of over 50 frames. I would have carried on to cover more, but I'd already been out 3 hours and it was freezing, and I was really only filling in time till Saturn was in a decent position so I could call it a night. I had to reduce the image to get it onto the site - it is 52MB in BMP/TIF - 2.5MB in JPEG, I shrunk it 50%. All done using VOB Frame Extractor, Registax, iMerge, and Gimp.

M.

[RobH]

A great image and a good approach that works very nicely.

Cheers

Rob