The Moon

[Paulyman]

After the storm last night the sky cleared so I took the chance and set up. Decided to do some gear testing and I think I finally solved an issue with my mount initially having no idea where it is and crashing trying to crash into the pier when doing an initial plate solve. Discovered iOptron Commander allows me to reset the mount model, not sure why it would have one on start up but whatever, the moment I did that and asked it to plate solve from zero position it was nearly spot one and only needed a small correction.

Fixing that I decided to switch to the big bright ball in the sky and try some RGB lunar imaging in Sharpcap. Haven't really done any lunar imaging before so it was quite fun. Managed 500 frames in each channel. Registax has suddenly stopped working on all my windows systems so had to learn to use AutoStakkert. Not sure it fully nailed the RGB alignment but its close enough for a first go.

The ZWO183 did a good job on the little WO Star 71.

[Mickoid]

Nice sharp detailed shot Paul. The colour balance looks a bit off but it does enhance the contrast. I've never done RGB imaging on the moon, I imagine getting the right balance would not be easy.

[Paulyman]

Thanks Mick, yeah Autostakkert didn't do a stellar job aligning the channels so it came out a bit weird but with great contrast. I think I've found a bit of a hack to get autostakkert to better align the channels and am running it through PixInsight now and doing a colour calibration to see if it comes out better balanced.

[Paulyman]

Alright, so I reattempted aligning the channels in autostakkert and colour calibrated using PixInsight. Still some blue tinges here or there, perhaps that is just atmospheric dispersion, it was only about 30 degrees above the horizon.

[Mickoid]

I really like that reprocess Paul, it makes it look almost 3D. Great to see some colour variation without looking too overdone, nice one! :thumbsup:

[Paulyman]

Thanks Mick.