Seeing wasn’t great ( halo around the moon caused by some coastal sea fog ) but still decided to take some lunar video on BYEOS of the waxing moon
Canon 600D
1500 frames AVI file @ISO800
Stacked in Autostakkert 3
Focus is out as my glasses got fried in the car during the day so I was guessing
Location is the moon’s northern Quadrant with the Apennine mountain range the key feature along with craters Plato,Archimedes and Aristillus
The Apollo 15 landing site is located at the end of the first ( left hand side ) mountain range on the Hadley plain
The landing of Apollo 15 was the most precarious as one of the four landing pads ended up in a small crater and leaving the lunar module on an angle which concerned NASA for the ascent 3 days later
Cheers
I appreciate that this is "beginners astronomy" but I have to ask (NOT being an imager myself), why does stacking 1500 images look flat almost out of focus, when a single image appears to look better
Hi Jeremy, As you are probably aware, the earth's atmosphere is never
absolutely still, meaning that single frame images that are pin sharp in all
parts of the image are frequently not possible. On favourable nights fine
single frame images can be obtained. The very best images though are
taken by stacking large numbers of video frames. The trick with stacking is
that you have to learn to use the software[Registax or similar], the stacking
is just the beginning. You have to choose a reference frame. After stacking,
the image has then to be worked on in the wavelets section of Registax in order to bring out, or highlight, the hidden detail in the image.
The benefits of stacking are much more obvious when imaging the planets,
where a single frame image cannot hold a candle to the often stunning
stacked images.
raymo
P.S. I suspect that many newbies don't really properly understand how to
use Registax[or similar].
Jeremy
Raymo is totally correct
As I mentioned in my post seeing conditions were poor due to atmospheric turbulence and low lying sea fog
I too have taken a single iPhone shot of the moon through my 12” dob with good detail but stacking video files , sharpening and processing in good seeing conditions especially at 5 x mag or higher provides a superior image to that of any single frame. Like Raymo mentioned it’s almost impossible to capture a good single frame image of the planets, the only way to do this is through “Lucky imaging” by stacking and post processing
Have a look at Jerry Lodriguss website astropix , he is a master at lunar and planetary imaging
Raymo
As I mentioned in my post I used BYEOS on the laptop. I always set up on my outdoor workstation now for all astrophotography. But I don’t sit there all night, only check on guiding etc. once every half hour / hour or so and to check on progress of capture frames etc..
See some photos of my set up at night
Thanks all for replying
Most appreciated
Cheers
Martin
Hi Jeremy, As you are probably aware, the earth's atmosphere is never
absolutely still, meaning that single frame images that are pin sharp in all
parts of the image are frequently not possible. On favourable nights fine
single frame images can be obtained. The very best images though are
taken by stacking large numbers of video frames. The trick with stacking is
that you have to learn to use the software[Registax or similar], the stacking
is just the beginning. You have to choose a reference frame. After stacking,
the image has then to be worked on in the wavelets section of Registax in order to bring out, or highlight, the hidden detail in the image.
The benefits of stacking are much more obvious when imaging the planets,
where a single frame image cannot hold a candle to the often stunning
stacked images.
raymo
P.S. I suspect that many newbies don't really properly understand how to
use Registax[or similar].
