Moon Mosaic With a 6 inch Dobsonian

Well, I didnt think I could do it, but....
I took a mosaic of the first quarter moon using the dob.  It came out so good, I think its my best so far.  I imaged this at f/8 - no barlow, just the webcam in the focuser.  I ran it in "drift mode", and each frame is a stack of 15 frames that were close enough together to stack.  5 fps.

Here it is:

I took a few other images as well, using the 2X barlow.  I'll post those here as well.  These are random shots...I have more yet to process.

I'm not sure where this is at the moment, I will try to find it on the map.  I dont even know at this point if north is up.

This is Mare Serenititus  I do not believe I had the barlow in for this image.

South polar region 9/11

Took a full moon mosaic, but I missed 1 part square in the middle, but I did take some closeups of the south polar region for more study...

Here they are.....

The Evening Moon

I miss my old friend.  The Evening Moon is too low in the sky in the summer to take good photographs, but tonight it was high enough to do a little something with it.  I also took some closeups of a few different areas which I will post in another posting as soon as I get them processed.  In the meantime, I just finished a low resolution mosaic of slightly under the first quarter.  It had a purplish hue while I was photographing, which I thought was rather pleasing, so I did not color balance it out.  I just think this is a pretty nice moon.

I havent done one of these in a long time, I was afraid I forgot how.  The moon was still a bit low, and didnt have enough time to do a high resolution mosaic.  I used 5 frames each 640X480, each consisting of 200 stacked AVI frames.

Mosaic - 'Along the Terminator' 8/16/2011

I took 20 avi's of the moon on 8/16, and after looking, it seems I'm able to make a mosaic of the terminator with nothing missing, so I did.  Here it is...

This was made up of 19 individual 640X480 images glued together.

More Lunar Images - 7/10

These next images are images I also took last night but didnt get stacked until today.  The first is of Crater Plato, the second is Tycho, 2 areas that are well photographed, but I thought I would give it a shot again.  The Plato image isnt what I would have liked, it seems the last time I photographed it, I got a few tiny craters captured inside the big one, this image shows a bare, craterless floor.  The craterlets on Plato's floor are quite tiny, but I thought I would have been able to capture at least a few, but apparently not last night

Crater Plato

Some words on the conditions from last night's imaging session.  The seeing was exceptional most of the time.   Towards the end of the session, some small clouds moved in, and the seeing changed during the time it became partly cloudy.  The moon was "dancing" a bit in the scope for the last few images during times when the moon was fully unobstructed by the clouds.  Up until that point, the seeing was perfectly steady.

Crater Tycho

Partial Mosaic

Worked on a mosaic tonight, but I ran out of time.  The moon sunk into a tree, so that ended the photography session for this evening.   I only got 2 complete rows before I had to stop.  I started with the north and worked down.  I found an interesting feature while looking over the mosaic, so I brightened that tile and am posting it as well as the mosaic.  It is the region near WC Bond on the northern limb.  Seems there is a valley or rima or something like that.  My maps dont name it, so I'll have to look it up online.

Here is the partial mosaic, which I think the quality is quite good:

Here is the section I was talking about.  Fascinating terrain.....

I labelled W.C. Bond and if you look to the right of the crater, there appears to be a valley of some sort.  Its not real long, I dont know if its a valley or if its a crater wall.  Looks like some kinda valley to me.  Maybe its a crater, from an object that struck at a very shallow angle.

Seeing wasnt too good when these were taken.  The moon this time of year starts out rather low in the sky, and I didnt have time to do a whole lot before it sunk too low to work with.  I also spent a bunch of time trying to get the polar alignment perfect, so I could track better.  Transparency wasnt good, and I was unable to see Polaris well enough to align, so it was cut and try, trying to keep the image from moving up or down as I made adjustments to the mount.

Considering the conditions, I feel that what I did get was of pretty good quality.

Lunar Mosaic Using The 3X Barlow

As the picture of the moon gets bigger, it becomes more difficult to take a series of images to put a mosaic together.  It is coming to a point where using the 3X barlow is useful mainly for looking at individual features on the moon.  This is the second lunar image I have attempted with the new barlow, and in both instances, I missed areas, but tonight's image I think I missed the lesser amount.  I am going to post the image, even though it is not perfect.  I'm posting this to show how difficult it is once the moon is magnified to this extent.  The images are quite sharp, and the barlow will make for studying specific areas of the moon's surface.  This is what I'll be doing from here on with the barlow.  If I have a really long time to set aside to photograph in the future, perhaps I will try doing this again.

The full size image can be found at http://kd0ar.homeip.net/2011-07-05-moon.jpg

More May 11 Images

Because it was so late when I got done imaging on May 11 with the new webcam, I had to wait until the next day or 2 to process and post additional images that I have taken that evening. Because we are in the middle of a thunderstorm right now, I thought this would be a good time to post additional pictures that I had taken on May 11. We'll start with this image of the "North Pole". The South shows a small portion of Mare Frigoris, just above and centered is the poorly defined crater W. Bond. The well defined crater left center is Anaxagoras, and above that and almost centered is, I believe Scoresby.


Next I took a full moon mosaic.  Although I feel like I've taken better quality mosaics before, I'll post this one anyway, as a sample image that was taken without the barlow.  All of the other images were taken with the 2X barlow.

Sorry, a little got chopped off the top, I let the avi get too close to the top edge.

The next image is a mosaic in high resolution of the bottom 1/3 of the moon.  This was a mosaic of I believe 9 images:

In addition to these lunar images, I also took 2 more of Saturn, of which are here:

These images are raw, after stacking and after wavelet sharpening, but are uncropped.  The one on the right used a little bit of camera zoom when it was taken.  Keep in mind also, that these were shot through thin cloud cover.  Transparency was not very good when all of these photos were taken.  I was using the homemade 127mm, X 700 mm fl refractor.

Quickcam 4000 First Light

Well, it came today from ebay.  Picked up the quickcam 4000, removed the lens and took it outside to have a look at the moon.  The images were so sharp and detailed, once I had figured out all of the settings, and there are a lot more than what I was used to with the newer cameras.  What is nice is that you can adjust the shutter speed independent of the frame rate.  I'm beginning to understand why the older cameras were so popular.

This camera is a CCD, whereas all of my other ones are cmos.  I'm going to have to get another one of these, for sure!  I want to do the lx mod on one of them if I can get a 2nd one.  This camera makes an incredible planetary and lunar cam.  Here are a few of the images I have taken with it.:

Appenine Mts

Clavius

Plato and the Alpine Valley

The Straight Wall

As you can see, the detail is so much better with this camera, I was amazed at what I was seeing on the screen!

While I was at it, I thought I'd shoot a video of Saturn, being the moon pics were so detailed, so here's what I got:
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Ok, now for the complete story.  The sky was filled with thin clouds, transparency was not very good.  Seeing appeared good to average.  I took the saturn image too dark, and had to boost the light level to stack it.  It is not as good as it could be.  The camera will take some getting used to before I get everything correct.  Even though the conditions werent too good, this is one of my best images of Saturn so far.

Rupes Altai & Caucasus and Haemus Mts

Tonight was a reasonably clear evening, and the seeing was pretty good, so I thought I would take a few higher resolution photos of the moon.  I took new pictures of a couple of different areas of the moon that I had taken previously. 

   I was playing with the contrast a little more - as in increasing it, and I found the images are showing far more detail, as in this image of Rupes Altai.  This photo is in color, I liked how it came out so well, I just couldnt discard the color information in this one.

 Here is a mosaic of 2 images showing the 2 mountain ranges that border the shore of Mare Serenatis.  I believe thes images are my best photos of the moon so far.
This image was photographed in greyscale.


I used the 127mm refractor.  Each frame in both images consists of at least 200 frames stacked in Registax 6. This image I used linked wavelets as an experiment.  Although it does sharpen the image a bit more, it is extremely touchy, and a little goes a long way.

As in all of the images on this website, you can click on the image to see them full size.

Plato & Montes Alpes

4/13 I took a bunch of video of different areas of the moon.  This one is of Plato  and Montes Alpes.  Cassini crater and Aristillus are also shown in Mare Imbrium

 [Logitech Webcam C160]
Resolution=640x480
Frame Rate (fps)=10.00
Colour Space / Compression=I420
Exposure=-6
Brightness=190
Contrast=38
Saturation=0
Sharpness=0
WhiteBalance=5640
BacklightCompensation=0
Gain=0

Rupes Altai

Another mountain range, Rupes Altai, near Mare Nectaris.  The large crater at the top is Catharina.  Again, I used the green filter on the 127mm refractor operating with the 2X barlow, effective focal length 1400mm.

I will be photographing more mountain ranges, and will do so next time without the filter, as the images from last night came out much better quality.


As a bonus, here's another that I took tonight...

Top O' the Moon

Mare Serenitatis Mosaic

Wanted to shoot some mountians tonight, so what better subject than Mare Serenitatis.  Bordered on the northwest  by Montes Caucasus, and to the southwest by Montes Haemus.

The segments consist of various numbers of frames stacked in Registax 6.  Photographed with the green filter, and the images arent as good as I'd liked.  Used the barlow lens to get up close.  Here it is....

Yesterday's images were taken with no filters, and I probably should have not used any tonight, but I wanted to see what the difference is.

Also, I rebuilt my home made focuser on the 127mm refractor (which these images have come from).  The one I had was too short, and I had to use my diagonal to get focus.  I added 6 inches to the optical path, using 2" pvc pipe as the extension.  I find that I do not need as much travel on the drawtube as I need for the 70mm.  Even though the focal length is about the same, apparently the faster 127mm requires less travel on the drawtube to focus all of my eyepieces and camera.

6-Day Old Moon

I was so impressed with the 3 day old moon, I imaged the moon again on my next clear sky, which happened to be when the moon was 6 days old.  I made a number of images, with and without the clock drive.  I made a modification in the clock drive mount, putting the stepper motor on grommets to reduce vibration, but I may have made things worse.  I'll let you decide...  The telescope used was the 127mm refractor.

This is with the clock drive off, using unstacked individual frames.  In all cases, I used 5 frames per second in the AVI, processing in Registax 6, wavelets, de-ringing and gamma adjustment.  Some touch up brightness, etc done in photoshop.

The next image uses the clock drive, running at least 50 stacked frames per segment in Registax, with similar wavelet and deringing processing.  Processing similar to above image.

Before I took these 2 images at low resolution - camera 640X480, but with no barlow, I was getting a feel for the focusing and camera settings with and without the barlow.  The images with the barlow was so sharp, I had to snap some avi's.  Here are a couple of images of the Mare Nectarus area:

 

 

These 3 images of Mare Nectarus were taken using various numbers of frames stacked, the 2nd image, using a red filter at the camera.

I need to take better notes as to how many frames were used in stacking, etc.

2 Day Old Moon - Different Processing Approach

I believe this image has slightly more detail than the one I posted yesterday:

This image I did not stack any frames.  That right there reduced a substantial amount of blur.  Tried many times stacking images, but every one seemed to come out much blurrier than a single frame.  I did do some wavelet sharpening on each of the frames that I picked for each segment.  The wavelet enhancement was picked once, and held all of the settings constant for each segment.

After I was happy with each single stack segment, I pasted them together in imerge.
After that, I loaded the image in iris, and adjusted out the background lightness so it did not show the jagged edges of the frames in the final image.

Following that, the image was then loaded into photoshop, where I did a smart sharpen, then some contrast/brightness using the levels function, and what I ended up with is what you see here.

2 Day Old Moon

Finally, a decent photograph, and the elevation was low too.  I got home from eating dinner when I saw a nice thin sliver of moon, so I hurried and set up the 127mm refractor.  I used the new camera, a Logitech 270 webcam. I also used a #58 green filter.  I had bought this one to compare with the one I had been using.  This camera has far less vignetting than the other camera I have been using, so I think this will be a much better lunar cam.  The mosaic is rather low resolution, used 4 frames, each frame consists of at least 200 avi frames stacked in registax 6.  This image was done in a hurried fashion, but it looks like I got some good frames, so at a later post, I'll go over the frames and take better care of what avi frames get stacked.

Anyway here is a photo of a 2 day, 4 hour moon:

Considering this being the first lunar image (i believe) with the homemade refractor, I thought it came out pretty decent.  Again, I'll post a revised image later, when I have more time to spend on image processing.

Stacking Moon Images

I was working with some images from last night, and I was playing around with stacking some images in Registax.  Because I have no clock drive, I'm limited as to the number of frames I can stack, as the features that I want to enhance drift out of the field.  However, I was able to stack about 100 frames on this image:

Notice how smooth Mare Imbrium appears.  This is beginning to show the look that I have been after.  I do have a clock drive in the works, I'm awaiting one component to arrive so I can finish building the controller.

Individual craters

It was windy last night, almost a full moon, and I couldnt keep the telescope from bouncing around.  Nevertheless, I took some images, but did not capture the entire moon.  I did take some nice individual crater frames that I'd like to post here.  I took another photo of the region around Plato:

The next image shows the western edge of Mare Humboldtianum on the horizon, with crater Endymion making a prominent showing.  Atlas and Hercules are also showing nicely, as well as Mare Frigoris.

The next image is the area around Mare Crisium.

My Best Moon Yet (I Think)

Nice clear night tonight, at least early on.  I was able to do a mighty fine capture of the moon in high resolution using the refractor (70mm).  No barlow, but I did use 640X480 camera resolution, and zoomed enough to get rid of the vignetting.  I took the advice from Victor and shot with increased contrast. 

Seeing was bad, it was about 60F here today, and its still warm out.  I think there is a bit of a temperature inversion going on, but lets say the seeing was, on a scale of 1 - 10, about a 3.

I stacked about 10 frames each for each piece of the moon.  It appeared to make things a bit more uniform.  There are some fine lines here and there, but overall, I think this moon turned out pretty darn good.

Crater Plato

Taken on 8 inch dob, 35 frames stacked.