Mosaics from 21 July 2010

[TheThing]

Moon was a bit higher for me last night, so managed a good hour or so imaging it.

Orion SSSS-II thru a 6", f5 Newt, approx 75x, 10 panes sticted together in Microsoft ICE. I think I've cracked the over exposure of my last mosaic. I re-set the exposure time frm auto at about 52, down to 13 manually.

[Merlin66]

Great looking result!

Well done.

[russ]

That's a cracking image!

[TheThing]

Thanks gents. I'm pretty pleased with it.

[jgs001]

That's much better than the other one you posted. Very very good.

[Space Cowboy]

Great work Hugh! Not seen the moon for over 3 weeks here in monsoon Cheshire!

[resonator77]

nice one

wonder, why is it blueish ?

did you use moonfilter?

[TheThing]

Thanks for the kind words gents. Praise from my peers is making my head swell! I had a really excellent session imaging last night. Amazing fun and it went so quickly.

I was playing about with the Hue setting on the camera, which gave it a bluish tinge. It just looked good on my laptop, so I went with it!

[TheThing]

Here's the 2nd mosaic I took last night. This is just an experiment really. I was using my 4x ImageMate for the first time (thanks Karlo!) to give about 300x.

Focus is a little soft. It's quite hard to focus at that power, ever with an electric focuser! Also, there is a chunk missing from the right hand edge and, for some reason, ICE has made it slightly rugby ball shaped! Still, as first attempts go, I'm pretty pleased. Itching to have another 'shot' at it!

[jgs001]

It is harder to get it focused properly at higher mag isn't it... Still, That's come out nicely. Are the panes all still single shots ? You know you can just dump each pane into iMerge and check for holes as you shoot ? It'll take avi's... accuracy of mosaicing isn't critical at that step of course as you're checking for overlaps more than getting it spot on.

[TheThing]

Ah, I didn't know that. Thanks john, I'll give it a go next time! They are all single shots. I haven't tried taking avi's yet - still got to practise at that.

Focus was a real sweat! Much more forgiving on the Mak, but I've not tried that for imaging yet.

What really surprised me, was that just moving the scope slightly to take the next pane resulted in a need to refocus! I thought it would all be at pretty much the same focus.

[skywatcher1701]

really nice shots well done

[Cazagee]

Hi TheThing,

Nice shots Just thought I'd let you know that you inspired me to give Lunar Mosaics a go. I googled ICE and downloaded it earlier tonight and played a bit with it. It's a great programme. Thanks very much for mentioning it in your post.

I'm quite quiet on the forum but I do like to keep an eye on what's going on here. Look forward to seeing some more of your work.

Clear skies.

Carol

[Keiran]

Im liking the look of them Hugh, i really need to have a go at a mosaic

[TheThing]

Have a go Keiran. Microsoft ICE makes it so easy! Just open all the pictures up from the File sub menu and it stitches them all together for you. I love it!