Moon Mosaic - How Many Captures?

[MorningMajor]

I tried a moon mosaic with my modded Philips 880 on friday night - sadly, I was using my old laptop and hadn't cleared enough disk space so after about 19 captures I ran out of space - however, when reviewing what I had got (and I was quite pleased with the quality) I realised that after 19 x 1000 frame captures I had only got about 30% of the whole of the moon. I might have been a bit generous with the amount of overlap I allowed but still....

How many captures would you expect to have to do to cover a full moon?

I tried adding to it yesterday, but the clouds were rolling in and the images were never going to match - if it had been clear can you do it over 2 nights or and get a good match, or is the moon just too different?

[Bizibilder]

The field of view is a function of focal length as well as camera sensor size. You are at around f/12 so the fov is pretty small with the SPC880. A focal reducer would help (if there is one for your scope).

You cannot take photo's over two nights if you want to combine them. The Moon rotates once in about 28 days which is around 13° a day - the shadows will have changed considerably by then! In fact, if you are going to mosaic the Moon in one go, then you really ought to do the terminator first as it will have changed too much to get a match in your photos if you leave more than around 15 mins between frames (less for a really good match)