The Moon

[Kenny]

My first attempt at imaging with the Celestron Neximage Solar System Imager this evening. 8" Orion Skyquest Dobsonian. Imaged from Orpington (Southeast London). Using the "drift method" though these are actually unprocessed stills. I have some video footage but need to figure out how to process it. Very flat/2D due to the full Moon. Some leveling and sharpening in Paint.net.

Mare Fecunditatis with Crater Langrenus prominent in the left of the image:


Crater Tycho:


Crater Copernicus:

[The Thing]

Very good for stills. What scope etc. are you using? See my other post for software for processing the video.

[Mike]

Very good Kenny. It would of course be way better if you were able to stack video as you will always be chasing seeing with the Moon plus those cameras are noisy.

[Carole]

Well done Kenny.

There are several types of stacking software for AVIs:
Registax
AutoStakkert
Avistack (I couldn't work this one out, but Duncan uses it successfully)

Carole

[Kenny]

Thanks all.

Mike. I agree re stacking. The Jupiter image was stacked. I tried stacking the Moon footage but Registax couldn't cope with tracking alignment points inside the Moon. It's almost certainly my inexperience and I will have another go this week.

[Sue]

You have been busy! 

[Kenny]

Very good for stills. What scope etc. are you using? See my other post for software for processing the video.

Scope details in the original post above. 8" Dob telescope with Celestron NexImage CCD camera.

[MarkS]

Some nice stills there Kenny.  The contrast looks extremely high, though.

Stacking will make a huge difference to the final image.

Mark

[Kenny]

Some nice stills there Kenny.  The contrast looks extremely high, though.

Stacking will make a huge difference to the final image.

Mark

That's my fault. The original snaps were very washed out as I didn't spend enough time finessing the camera levels. Post processing (in my defence, BSIA advised me to work on post-processing the levels of the stills and posted a similar high contrast example).

[Kenny]

Another go this evening... moving forward. Stacked images not snapshots this time. 6" Newt on the OAS HEQ5 guided mount. Celestron NexImage CCD with 2XBarlow. Circa 30-60 seconds of subs processed in Registax (which I'm still finding hit and miss to process).

Caters Petavius and Langrenus


Crater Tycho (and friends)


Mare Crisium and craters close to the terminator

[Carole]

Big improvement Kenny, well done.

Carole

[The Thing]

Looking very good Kenny.

FYI I find autoguiding is not so good for these sorts of images, I think it is the fast corrections making the mount/camera vibrate. I find slow manual control gives better results, not so difficult as the mount should be tracking at Lunar rate for Moon shots.

[Fay]

Well done Kenny, nice to see come "new blood" on the scene. bet you are pleased with your efforts
Fay

[Kenny]

Thanks Fay. Yes, pleased with the improving results. A lot to learn

FYI I find autoguiding is not so good for these sorts of images, I think it is the fast corrections making the mount/camera vibrate. I find slow manual control gives better results, not so difficult as the mount should be tracking at Lunar rate for Moon shots.

I wasn't auto guiding. I set the scope to Lunar rate. Later Sidereal when imaging Jupiter. The scope was only roughly polar aligned as I haven't figured out yet to do the star alignment.

[Mike]

Ahh you did say "guided mount" !

I was also wondering what guiding equipment you were using.