Orpington Astronomical Society

Astronomy => Astrophotography => Topic started by: Kenny on Apr 06, 2015, 05:09:15

Title: Moon Mosaic
Post by: Kenny on Apr 06, 2015, 05:09:15
My first Moon mosaic!

12 pane mosaic of 97% waning gibbous Moon this evening. 6" Newtonian telescope on HEQ5 Pro mount, lunar tracking. 12 x 40 second AVIs captured with Celestron NexImage Solar System Imaging CCD Camera in SharpCap2. Videos stacked and auto-sharpened in AutoStakkert2, sharpened further with Registax wavelets and blended in i-Merge. Minor adjustment to histogram and curve in Photoshop CS2.

(https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7634/17050004885_18f0df1f2d_b.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/rYDJrt)
Title: Re: Moon Mosaic
Post by: Mike on Apr 06, 2015, 09:59:02
Nice job Kenny though it looks very dark to me.
Title: Re: Moon Mosaic
Post by: Carole on Apr 06, 2015, 10:48:53
Wow, coming on in leaps and bounds. 

Quoteit looks very dark to me.
I was about to say the same thing. 

Carole
Title: Re: Moon Mosaic
Post by: The Thing on Apr 06, 2015, 11:31:32
I like this, the Moon only has an albedo of 0.12 so I think dark is good. Better than any Moon I've done!
Title: Re: Moon Mosaic
Post by: Kenny on Apr 06, 2015, 14:34:57
Thanks all.

It is a bit dark but I prefer it like that (in this phase). I deliberately pulled the curve into a slight S to bring out the surface features because it was so 'flat' when it came out post-stacking however this does lose some of the dark limb at the terminator and reduce the overall brightness. I could have added another curve to brighten it back up again but it starts to burn out the brightest craters. Possibly too much time watching the Baker Street guys who process the Moon like this quite a lot.
Title: Re: Moon Mosaic
Post by: MarkS on Apr 06, 2015, 17:44:13
The earth has albedo 0.39 or at least that's what it was back when Vangelis recorded his eponymous album.
Title: Re: Moon Mosaic
Post by: The Thing on Apr 06, 2015, 18:06:23
Quote from: MarkS on Apr 06, 2015, 17:44:13
The earth has albedo 0.39 or at least that's what it was back when Vangelis recorded his eponymous album.

Got that, knew that.  8)
Title: Re: Moon Mosaic
Post by: julian on Apr 06, 2015, 18:23:42
very nice Kenny
Title: Re: Moon Mosaic
Post by: JohnP on Apr 06, 2015, 18:50:29
nice & nice and sharp as well - how many images were stacked in each pane?
Title: Re: Moon Mosaic
Post by: Kenny on Apr 07, 2015, 00:06:18
12 x 40 sec videos at 30 fps. After the Analyse step in AS2 I was aiming for ~70% quality. Looking at the quality curve I think I chose 250 or 300 frames to create 12 x overlapping TIFFs (then converted to BMP so I could blend together in i-Merge).
Title: Re: Moon Mosaic
Post by: RachelC on Apr 10, 2015, 12:14:19
So jealous! The detail is amazing. A Moon mosaic is on my list...  :D