It is hard to better Dave882s' excellent image of Clavius taken about the same time and in similar conditions. Although the seeing was average at best, I carried on regardless and captured some reasonable images of various lunar features. The one mistake I made was inadvertently using an IR/UV filter instead of the 23A, red filter, hence the brighter sunlit crater rims that were hard to process.
Same gear as usual , 180 SW Mak, HEQ5, ZWO290mm, best 25% of 2K frames, in Autostakkert and Registax.
Thanks for the comments guys, I have managed to get some reasonable images lately. Have been using Registax for over 10 years and still learning new or better ways to manipulate images with Wavelets. In the past 2 or 3 years have started using Autostakkert for initial quality and aligning before moving over to Registax for the Wavelets sharpening. Autostakkert handles the file size much easier than Registax but not much difference in the end result from what I can see.
Thanks Dave, I like the Plato image too, not just for the craterlets on its floor or the rille down through the Vallis Alpes but how the peaks of the Alps have an almost 3D appearance. They really do look like they are sticking up above the surrounds.
I played with Registax wavelets and while I think I improved some regions of my images I didn't understand enough and made other areas considerably worse. It would have been lunar images, I'm a bit of a Lunar-Tic plus my locale I don't get to capture a lot of things due to neighbouring trees obstructing the field of view and large mountains blocking a high portion of what I'd like to image.
If I ever bother with a telescope again (I have 9 cheap things to choose from up to an RC8 carbon (useless for the moon and planets, actually, not so bad on the moon but planets are a no go)) I may go through some tutorials and try but at the moment I'm feeling more like I'd just like to not be here (earth not forum).
Jeff, your results are extremely inspirational!
Here's a funny thing, many years back I was involved with a non related forum with 3,000,000 members world wide and I used to post a range of my photographs, from the moon to lightning shots. I had several members contact me and tell me they had messed with telescopes when younger but given them up and they had decided they'd buy a unit to get their kids involved. One particular case was much like my situation at the time, a father who got his son on occasional weekends and he told me in a lovely PM his son loved my images and asked every time he went over if I'd shared more. It also gave them something they could enjoy doing together when the son was there. I was so happy to have given them something to bond over.
My lightning shots became wallpapers everywhere.
If curious about what forums have so many members, it was a warez site long gone where I enjoyed the chat section as a very lonely, sad, pathetic loser and the garage where I could talk to like minded people about everything auto related. Plus the computer and hardware section when I was studying IT.
