2000 frames of the moon enough for clear pic?

[Jannis]

As a result prom previous dissapointing and unclear moon pics, decided to do something about it tonight...

So will stack some full res moon pics. planning on shooting in raw, and converting to TIF for stacking, meaning 109MB files * 2000 ~218 GB..

will be fun to see how many weeks i need for processing this on my server...

But is it enough with about 2000 frames of the moon to get a clear pic, or will there be any improvement with taking more?

Will see how my focuse become without coma corrector. i might end up taking 4 series, then putting them together to ahve the whole moon in focuse.

wil shoot at 1000mm focal with canon 550D with APS-C sensor, no filters. Shot in raw, ISO 100.

[Jannis]

Here's how it looks with a single frame from last time i took a pic. will attempt to stack some more then 20 like last time...

http://jannis.no-ip.info/astro/fullresmoonsingleframe.jpg

[brianb]

is it enough with about 2000 frames of the moon to get a clear pic

Should be more than adequate, unless you have the gain / ISO turned up too high.

[Jannis]

ok, i'll give it a try then. will shoot at iso 100, and even there i needed to set shutter to 1/1250s so moon wouldn't be washed out, so that's no problem.

currently at 120 pics

[Jannis]

But, a bit unsure about one thing coma..

as only the center is at focuse, it would be natural to move treh scope to take liek 500 frames from center, top right, top left, lower left and lorer right, and then put them together to make the whole moon in perfect focuse.

but, of course, if i just stack all these 2500 frames, i asume it will only make it worse, as it only then takes an averge of all the pics, as the whole moon is in teh frame anyway.

would the best be to, stack each part of 500 frames separatly, and then "cut out" the center part on each of these 5 and then put them together again to make 1 whole moon?

i guess that's the best way, right? but, that means the total pic will only be a result of 500 pics, not 2500, hmm. I'm not the one who don't have enough time, but, the moon is going down here in like 3 hours, and with a 6s gap between each pic, it isn't enough timnme... lol

or maybe it's better to simply take a Lot of frames, and stack them and live with the coma? or would there be no difference between 500 and 3500 frames anyway to get rid of air turbulense?

[Jannis]

Well, never mind, my camera just broke. mirror suddenly decided not to flit up any more. gerring err 20 when pushing live view button, and mirror motor makes a bad noise....

lovely timing for a half year old camera, lol

edit: Err 20 Malfunctions related to the mechanical mechanism have been detected.

well, guess that explains it...

[Jannis]

Ok, lucky, even if unlucky. seems that it's only a problem with my DC adapter not giving enough current to the camera to run the mirror motor. working ok with batteries. so, well, battery is going to limit me here now at -5c, but i'll see what i'll be able to get. at 900 frames so far

all more or less with moon in center though. without the DC adapter, and used a great amount of time solving this issue, i won't have enough time to do anything else. hope it will turn out OK anyway.

[Mick UK]

Hello Jannis, i hope you dont mind i could'nt resist having a very quick play with your moon shot before i take the dog out!.

Click on the moon image and it will enlarge for you..looks quite a pic form one image!!

Imageshack - fullresmoonsingleframec.jpg

[Jannis]

thanks,i don't mind.

It's not a bad pic, but that pic was a tiny tiny bit out of focuse i think, and craters and so was rather unclear on the moon.

this is teh amout of details i got from stacking an avi file at 640*480 crop, and is more or less what i'm hoping to get on the whole moon, without having to do a mosaic..

Edit: well, quality, as in clearity. i know i can't get teh same crater details and so becuase of the shadows that are gone now.

http://jannis.no-ip.info/astro/full/stacked%20moon.jpg

when session is over for today, i'll also give it a try to do a few minute of video recordig at 1080p 25 FPS and see how that compares to the several hours working to take these pics. i'm up to around 1500 total now in around 20 min when i go out again to restart the timer.

[Jannis]

Ok, well.. Err..

I'd love to update this, but there had to be some changes to the plan here.

Ended up with a total of 1288 frames.

However, after converting to TIF, and loading them all in avistack and let it work overnight, i wake up to see the message saying something close to this:

"time used: 7:58 min, time left: 2130:xx", meaning roughly 2.6 months.

So, had to bite the apple, and converted to JGP instead at maximum quality, and let avistack work overnight.

So today, i woke up with information about the estimated time remaining is roughly 11-12 days...

Not sure if i'll wait for this as i'm completly unsure about how the result will be compared to a simple 100 frame stack, but we'll see.

Not sure IF it will finish, or crash, but will see what happends.

In worst case, i think i'll try to stack bunches of 200 frame pics, and then restack the 6-7 pics.