[EricB (Eric)]

Hi there!

I haven't posted for a while. This is the result of bad synchronisation between my availability at night and good skies. However, I have had a very good run in the last week and have managed to take good quality AVIs of the Moon.

I have had a DMK41 for about 6 months, and I love it for its resolution and for its field of view. However, I have been frustrated by 2 things:

1) No being able to use the DMK in conjunction with my x3 Bintel Barlow. No matter what I do, I can't get any focus. I haven't solved that one yet.

2) Not having a focal reducer, I have been unable to take picture of the whole Moon.

Well, a few days ago, I decided to try to put together a mosaic (something I had never attempted before). I took 13 AVIs if the Moon, covering the whole disc, with a lot of overlap.

I processed each AVI as I normally do using Registax. I made sure I kept the same settings each time I processed each AVI. I ended up with 13 JPEG pictures.

I downloaded Autostich (which is free), imported the pictures into it, pressed Start and within seconds, to my amazement, I had the whole Moon disc looking like it was a single shot!

I tweaked the levels a tiny bit in GIMP. The result is the rather pleasing picture attached.

Now I have to solve the Barlow problem...

Cheers,

Eric

PS there is a tiny bit of data missing on the edge of the disc on the top left.