First Moon images - a long time processing

[ColHut (Colin)]

See attached. A partial moon mosaic I made from experiments on 27/12/2007 consisting of 6 images overlaid onto a jpeg snapped from the Virtual Moon Atlas.

A note about the image
The images originated as a series of AVIs obtained through a 4.5" f8 reflector on an alt/azimuth "goto" mount (my dreaded Bushnell Northstar). The capture device is a super el-cheapo modified Logitech 640 X 480 CMOS web-cam which I disassembled and attached to the barrel of my SR 4mm eyepiece (thus it includes a thread for filters). I bought this at the very end of 2007 and the images were snapped on the 27/12/2007. I used K3CCD tools freeware to capture 6 experimental AVIs of 32-95 frames.
AVIs 1,2 & 5 were grossly over exposed. The seeing was poor. The 6 AVIs were then converted to bitmaps using PCFE and VirtualDub, and then processed in Registax 5 (earlier attempts with Registax 4 just didn't work well) to stack, optimise, and apply wavelets. StellarMagic was used to apply some deconvolution.
Images 1,2 and 5 were merged using Microsoft ICE, as was image 4 and 6. 2 didn't match any others!
I then had the idea of tiling them on a base image so I could work out where on the moon they were from. Since the images were taken over an hour the images were all slightly rotated which caused problems with some stitching software. The 6 images were overlaid onto a jpeg snapped from the Virtual Moon Atlas (ver 4.0b pro) flipped and re-sized to match the view through a Newt. Virtual Moon Atlas allows you to see the moon at any time through its Ephemeris tab so I could ensure the underlay image matched the correct time and location of my images. Also I had made no effort to rotate the web-cam so that the image appeared in any orthodox orientation - which then made it harder for me to work out what I had taken images of! The image were overlaid Using Jasc PaintShop pro 9.11 during which I tried learning how to cut and trim the images. I was not very successful with the merged top left images, and in the end I allowed a significant amount of the background to show through in the lightest region as there was no detail showing there.
Some skill with masking, feathering edges, and contrast correction are needed. I have kept the old AVIS in case of interest.

regards

The image was converted to a JPEG compressed somewhat (30%) to fit the upload requirements.

And for the fun - here is mars taken at the same time but the image scale is just too small!

[iceman (Mike)]

Interesting effect, Col.

Mosaics are always difficult. I always miss pieces

[sheeny (Al)]

Good start Colin. You've certainly used some software in that project! All good experience. These days I capture more frames (say 400-600, sometimes up to 1200) and then do nearly all processing in Registax 5 (as an avi), using only the best 30-150 frames. Just food for thought...

Al.

[ColHut (Colin)]

Thanks. I really just wanted to park the images together somewhere so I could see how they fit together (or not). There are nowhere near enough frames of the right quality and the mount caused all sorts of problems.

I took some more shots recently of the moon and saturn with the (newer) little newt on the EQ-2 mount and it was soooo much easier as it 'tracked' the object.

I need to learn a lot more about gain and exposure setting too.

regards

[markseibold (Mark Seibold)]

Colin

Beautiful work! I like the mosaic as it could just stand as a great piece of artwork. Have you considered framing it and putting it up where others can see it?

Even the Mars shot is interesting for comparison.

I look forward to seeing more of your fine efforts of photo mosaic imaging of the moon.

Mark