The Day After the Super Blue Moon (1 Feb 2018)

[The Thing]

At last a decent image from my new camera! My best moon ever, usually they end up with a bright rim and overexposed bits. I had to use almost the shortest possible exposure, 0.0004s and zero gain gave me the full dynamic range available which is definitely a good thing for the Moon. This is taken using a Region of Interest of 50% of the centre of the FoV which is a nice fit.

For Processing I just dragged the 100 FIT files into AS3! (BTW doesn't recognise the Bayer pattern recorded by APT in the FIT), no calibration files used, processed the output into another FIT file (75% stack cropped) to get 32bit output to preserve the dynamic range, this happily loaded directly into GIMP 2.9 beta (never crashed on me yet - looking forward to v3  ).

I'd like to get this camera on my 8" LX90 and get some close ups with these short exposures. The ROI feature and 4.63u pixel size means it could be an excellent planetary camera as well.


Image date, time and location:        2018-02-01 22:50:00 Manche, France
Telescope aperture and focal ratio:   TS1506UNC f4 Newtonian, TS Komakorr corrector, ZWO OAG with GPCAM2 Mono
Camera and filters used:               ZWO ASI294 Pro Colour @-15c, no filters
Processing applied:                       Autostakkert3! as 32bit FIT file, GIMP 2.9 (colour, curves, sharpening using NL filter, GEGL Noise Reduction and Unsharp Mask filter, Save As JPG), Irfanview (check JPG looks OK and set EXIF filedate/time)
Dimensions:   2024 x 1360 pixels

[ApophisAstros]

Lovely and round Duncan...
Nice.
Roger

[Mac]

Nice Image.

Mac.

[The Thing]

Thanks guys. Where have you popped up from Mac?

[Mac]

Still here, Just..... been lurking on the forum.

I havent had much time over the past few years! to do much astronomy.
I changed Jobs within the underground and life just got busier.

Every now and then I'll pop out, power up the PC and mount, clear the snails and cobwebs,
only to find that it doesnt want to play ball.
Spend 1-2 hrs trying to get it working and then go to bed, then fix it the following day

And when I do finally manage to get a free night, its cloudy......oh and everything always works perfectly then.

Now that the meetings have changed to a Wednesday, I'll have a better chance of getting to them,
Plus James now wants to do a lot more camping, I just need to free up my weekends.

But thats work for you.

Mac.

[Fay]

Very nice Moon Duncan....

[The Thing]

Thanks Fay. The 32bit version has loads of subtle details I just wouldn't have got with a DSLR. You can see central peaks in small craters and all sorts. I might post a PNG version as that won't be so mucked around by the jpg compression.

[Carole]

Very nice Duncan, you sound very happy with the new camera.

Carole