My first moon with the ToUcam

[iceman]

Last night was clear, so I thought I'd head out and take some avi of the moon, it's a target I hadn't tackled with the ToUcam yet.

It was quite windy though and seeing was less than average.. I persisted for practise though, and took some separate drifting avi's of the Copernicus area, Plato area, Clavius area and Mare Serenitatis. They were taken at f/5 (prime).. I tried some avi's of the same area at f/10 with the barlow as well.

I processed them separately this morning, but because the seeing was so bad the f/10 images were horrible, and the f/5 ones weren't anything overly special so I decided to practise making a mosaic in photoshop CS. I simply created a big document, and pasted in the 4 separate images, changing the opacity of each 1 by 1 to align them.

I didn't fiddle for too long worrying about the join marks, it was just a quick and dirty practise and I need to work on the settings when capturing the moon with the ToUcam, as the brighter areas were too bright at times and if I made them darker, the terminator area was too dark.. Practise needed!

Anyway here's my quick and dirty mosaic, you can see there's some pieces of the jigsaw puzzle missing, I think the dog ate them or they fell down the back of the lounge! :)

Click on the image to see the full size version.

http://www.iceinspace.com/images/images/moon/20041222-mosaic1-web.jpg (http://www.iceinspace.com/images/images/moon/20041222-mosaic1.htm)

Comments welcome, I know it's not perfect though :)

[ving]

well i like it!
are they raw or processed?... looks like you did a bit of sharpening on them

[iceman]

Thanks Ving.
Once I stitched the mosaic together I processed the whole image, a hard light filter (opacity 30%) and an unsharp mask.

[Mick]

Very nice, well done Ice.

[rumples riot]

Nice moon shots Mike

[gbeal]

Ice,
nothing wrong with that. You sound like you are coming around to my way of thinking re the seeing and imaging/not imaging.
Gary

[beren]

Because of Ices fantastic effort i thought i would dust the LPI off and try my hand at some pics and test this version of registax . Nice clear start to the evening , gentle breeze and no cloud , things where looking good . Because i havent used the LPI for a while i downloaded the latest version of {ah forget the name}well the video running software and the latest autostar/lpi update {couldnt get it to work though}. Unfortunately as sometimes it does the LPI and software was being tempermantal so by the time i had finally got it together and rembered the old tricks my first image was after 9.00. Unfortunately the breeze turned into a full scale wind which made focusing hard with the LPI capture software dragging its heels , my hat goes off to you Dob club members who do this unguided and without the aid of gadgets etc.
for some reason ive never been able to get decent images using the stack and align processing the lpi software has with the moon . I just took a heap of frames for registax and a couple of one framers just for the heck of it .
Saturn was getting higher, well visible anywhy so from about 11.00 to 3.00 i tried to get something but nature was way against me . The wind and the seeing just wiped out all my work and persistence , o well next time , it was hard to pack up with jupiter climbing above the neighbors house . Called it a night when my Fiance left for work at 4.00.......holy mackeral time just flew.

heres a couple of shots using a 6.3 focal reducer , not sure of the main crater {Tyco?}

[Mick]

Yes Tycho 88km wide Very nice.

[rumples riot]

Nice shots Stuart, when you use the LPI are you in the live tab forming a box around a feature and turning of tracking? If these things are not done you will get blurry images. Leave the combine tab checked.

If you are already doing these things, I can't think what the problem is.

Anyway good stuff Stuart.

Paul

[beren]

Thanks Paul thats it , i left the tracking on , ill see how that goes . Heres a example of what was happening.....

[astrodave]

I too got caught up in making a mosaic from ToUcam images. I was very pleased with the results. I had them professionally printed and stuck on the wall at work.

Much cut down to meet posting guidelines.

[astrodave]

The fuller moon was 31st March - 2470 frames

The cresent 16th April - 969 frames

[iceman]

Very very nice Dave, I especially like the 2nd one with the squiggles all over it :D

[astrodave]

With the cresent moon I did a number of passes in the pre-dawn and dawn light. I realised that between some of the passes I did some of the dots of light on the extreme limb had changed - it sent a shiver up my spine to realise that I had just seen the last rays of sunset on a lunar mountain.