Clavius - 9th May at 20:10

[Dennis]

Hi

Just grabbed an avi of Clavius during a spell of some really nice seeing. Only processing is in Registax, 220 from 1800 frames with Wavelet 1=25.

After this, the seeing went off the boil and turned quite ordinary.

Cheers

Dennis

[h0ughy]

OMG, wow how sharp is that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Lester]

Unbelievable shot Dennis, never seen so many craters inside Clavius.

[Octane]

Dennis,

That is incredible! Stunning.

I can't stop looking at it.

Wow!

Regards,
Humayun

[iceman]

oh my lord.. Dennis you are simply amazing.

What a brilliant shot. I don't think i'm gonig to post my shot of Clavius now.

The tonal range is just beautiful.

[Robert_T]

Dennis... come clean, you've had that SCT reamed out and refitted with a Mewlon 300 optics set haven't you:eyepop: :eyepop:

[sheeny]

Dennis,

You are the man when it comes to lunar shots!:thumbsup:

I notice your images seem a lot darker than mine, which helps to avoid the burned out white patches where the sun shines on crater walls, etc which I struggle with. I usually try to keep the top end of the histogram between 1/2 and 3/4 of full scale (in K3CCDTools) to try to control this. Any tips you'd care to share to avoid overexposing the bright bits?

Thanks,

Al.

[ving]

that has to be in the top 5 lunar shots i have ever seen!
great stuff! :D

[Dennis]

Hello, Al

For evenly illuminated, brighter regions of the moon, I have recently discovered that I can get good results with the following settings:

Capture rate: 5fps
Capture time: 360 secs (=1800 frames)
Brightness: 50%
Gamma: 25 to 50%
Gain: 25 to 50%
Shutter: 1/33 or 1/50sec

25% and 50% are rough guesses of where the slider is positioned. The Clavius image was a stack of approx 200 from the 1800, with the Quality in Registax set to 95% on the Align page.

I also try to keep the K3CCDTools histogram bar to between 210 and 230 to avoid burnt out whites in the avi capture.

For the moon, I discovered the use of the “Gamma” slider. Previously, I always had this hard left which seemed to work for Jupiter and Saturn. When imaging the moon, where there is so much more light available, as well as a tremendous brightness range to cope with. I have found that the Gamma setting can compensate for these factors, helping avoid the extremes of “coal blacks” and “whiter than white whites”.

By sliding the Gammas slider towards the right, I have observed the following:

Whites become toned down, i.e. they move towards light grey.
Blacks become less black, i.e. they move towards dark grey

This means that the overall image can appear “flattened” as the extremes of illumination are removed or modified.

I think this has something to do with how many shades of grey a monitor can display, or the ccd camera can handle. I believe that the ToUcam is an 8 bit device, which means that it can differentiate between 2 to the power of 8 (256) shades of grey, where pure black =0 and white =256.

The Gamma slider appears to try to keep the brightness range between 0 and 256, so that you do not lose any information.

Hope that helps.

Cheers

Dennis

PS - I noticed that the Clavius image looked a lot darker, too dark for my liking, when I viewed it indoors this morning, on the desktop PC LCD monitor, whereas last night in the garden where I processed it on the notebook computer, it looked okay.

[Striker]

Another beauty Dennis.

Thanks for the processing and setting tips.

[5ash]

Thats a Beautiful picture but without info on the telescope or method used is incomplete ! Normally I can guess the equipment from the members equipment shown at the bottom of the post. It was obvious that members who know you know of your telescope. Please no secrets in this forum when it comes to the origin of a picture,give us all the info.
philip
p.s I really do like the picture and wouldlike to know more. :shrug:

[sheeny]

Thanks Dennis!

Appreciate the tips. I have played with different settings, but so far my changes have been pretty ad-hoc. Your advice should help to get a bit of a systematic approach!

Thanks again.

Al.

[Dennis]

Must have missed this one in the blur of today, so many avi's, so little time - sigh. :juggle: I normally include equipment details, but posting from the back garden last night whilst still acquiring images via K3CCDTools as well as processing in Registax whilst reading IIS, must have addled my brain.

Anyhow, here they are:

Celestron C9.25 SCT
TeleVue x2.5 PowerMate
Philips 840K ToUcam.

See also Msg #9 of this thread, for other details.

Cheers

Dennis

[davidpretorius]

talk of the astro comps got me thinking of the best i could remember on IIS.

Your moon shot taken from the orbiter from a few months ago sprung immediately to mind. This is a close 2nd to that one.

Brilliant

[Dennis]

Thanks David, I had the same region in my field of view last night, but it didn't look as captivating; maybe the seeing wasn't up to it, or perhaps the libration wasn't as favourable?

I'm learning, fast, that good seeing doesn't last all night! Even on those evenings of great seeing, there can be so many periodic variations; you really have to be on your toes to get those fleeting moments of top seeing.

Cheers

Dennis