My best moon mosaic 20 Oct, 35 panes

[teh_orph]

Hello guys

After doing a few of these and not being too happy I think I've got the technique almost honed now. I still don't have good scheme for figuring out which bits I've missed though

This is a mosaic from the near full moon of Wednesday, made from 35 panes. Each pane is roughly 1000 frames (0.3 deg wide taken with a 2x barlow), each stacked in Registax, merged in iMerge. Then roughly six hours of PS CS3 sorting it out and crucially, filling in three holes from memory! I had some full moon shots from Aug which I spliced in. Yet they were from a different camera and were done sans-barlow so this made it a bit tricky

Please click the image for the full 2500x2500 picture.

Comments? I think I may have sharpened it slightly too much during the stacking process. I may blur some highlights in PS too bring some parts down a notch... Other than that I'm very pleased with the results, esp the big gaps!

Thanks for looking

EDIT: I've changed the image to sort out the bottom right where there was some colour clipping.

[Breakintheclouds]

Good work. Great to see you putting in so much effort - I only wish I had a monitor big enough to enjoy the full image all at once! The only comment I'd make is that the lower-right seems to have got a little washed out: the area below Mare Fecunditatis has got a patch of fairly flat white in it. Perhaps tweak the levels down a little?

[jgs001]

Nice work, but there's an easy way to make sure you don't miss bits... load the AVI's into iMerge.. I wrote up my process flow...

http://stargazerslounge.com/imaging-tips-tricks-techniques/104876-making-lunar-mosaic.html

[teh_orph]

The only comment I'd make is that the lower-right seems to have got a little washed out: the area below Mare Fecunditatis has got a patch of fairly flat white in it. Perhaps tweak the levels down a little?

Yes I totally agree - I think maybe I'll re-stack that part of the image, since I think it's been lost by the gamma correction I applied to every image at the end of each stack. I might have to wait until Monday though...my work machine's off (the one with PS) and can't remote desktop back into it until then!

Nice work, but there's an easy way to make sure you don't miss bits... load the AVI's into iMerge.. I wrote up my process flow...

Ah interesting, loading it with AVIs! I will try this next time. However - I've not yet read it - I guess I'll need to take into account the fact that the video size is normally slightly larger than the resulting stacked image? (as the image may move slightly)

Does anyone have any ideas how I can add some 'zazz' to the presentation...something a bit special?

Oh and I just looked any hard disk. It took 20 GB of footage to make this one image

[AndyUK]

Really nice image...! John's link / guide is excellent (I also tried a mosaic a couple of nights ago but not with a barlow - Maybe next time ). The ability to drag AVI's into imerge makes it MUCH easier (although if using Avistack, you have to ensure you allow a just a tad bit more for overlaps).

I also find that exposing for the lightest part of the moon before starting is a good plan... and then I also used a standard wavelet setting on each pane before stitching

PS - Have you tried Microsoft ICE...?

[teh_orph]

Oh nuts, I've just checked my iMerge results (the image with the holes) and there's no overexposed bits at all! I must have done that accidentally during the PS phase... Time for a few more hours work with it

Btw I've not tried MS Ice. (quick google) Oh nice, this looks like it could be useful! I might have a bash with this.

And I did have a single wavelet setting that I applied to every part of the image. However I made this initial setting for the terminator where it gave the best result. But by the time I hit the edge of the light side I'd noticed it had introduced some ringing on the limb! Something to learn for next time...

[teh_orph]

I've now updated the image to sort out the colour clipping as well as some other tidying up in the image. It looks slightly muted now in that region but the rest of the image should look pretty similar as I've varied the contrast adjustment across the image...

Comments?

[AndyUK]

Yes, that looks very good to me... I find the moon quite a difficult object to photograph when it's between 3/4 and full, but I'd be very pleased to get a result like that !

(PS what scope was this taken with?)

[teh_orph]

Thanks

I use a Skywatcher 130P (f/5) with one of those £6 Morgan's cameras (a modded SPC 880) and the holes were filled in with pics from my PSEye.

[AndyUK]

Those Morgan's cameras are a bargain - I couldn't resist picking up one of those too (even though 2 years ago I paid over £50 for a Toucam 840k...) Hey ho...

I'd be interested to see how you get on with MS ICE as I'm having difficulties at the moment - It could be just my frames but If I put more than 20 in, the composite disintegrates ... I also tried converting them all to bmp to put into imerge, but they don't even show up... . It's very frustrating as I have 68 AVI's from last night (46Gb) and it looks as though I may have to throw them all away