96% Mineral Lunar Mosaic

[Dave882 (David)]

The conditions this month have been very poor so not able to produce any decent high-res lunar closeups but instead I thought I'd try a wider view. I present a 3-Panel mosaic of the moon at 96% illumination. This is the first time I've attempted a lunar mosaic so a little trial and error involved.

Captured with ASICAP 4ms exposures, 100gain, my c14 non-edge and the imaging train I usually use for deep-space astrophotography using the 0.7x reducer and asi2600mc camera. Not ideal combo for fine detail but given the conditions and my inexperience I wanted to keep things simple with less panels.

Processed in AS!4, Registax6, mosaic with ICE, and some post-processing in PI & LR to boost contrast and saturation. I think the mineral colour saturation boost provides a much more interesting image on a full moon as otherwise it all looks a bit flat imho.

Obviously the end product was a massive Tiff file (over 300mb) and the jpg looses a fair bit of detail (let alone the tiny IIS 200kb version).

Please check out the larger version here...

Happy for suggestions / comments! Thanks for looking

[floyd_2 (Dean)]

Wow Dave - another amazing image. So much detail to pour over. Thanks for sharing mate. You've made excellent use of the poor conditions of late.

[Dave882 (David)]

Originally Posted by floyd_2

Wow Dave - another amazing image. So much detail to pour over. Thanks for sharing mate. You've made excellent use of the poor conditions of late.

Thanks Dean I appreciate the comments and glad you liked it. Would have loved to catch some higher res detail in some of those craters but the illumination is really tricky to deal with so pretty happy with how it turned out overall!

[Saturnine (Jeff)]

That is a great mineral moon image Dave. As you said, the increased saturation and contrast make for a more interesting full, or nearly full, moon image and brings more detail into the image.

[Leo.G (Leo)]

That's a stunning composition Dave!
I keep meaning to do it but we've had so much cloud and rain continually for the past 3-4 years I just haven't bothered.
Plus where I sit my mount I dug a big hole to put my pier in and it keeps filling with water and drilling holes in the bottom of the hole doesn't drain it.

When we've had good days I haven't been well enough and I'm not sitting my mount over a big hole full of water, I know exactly what could go wrong and my luck it will.
I like ICE (Image Composite Editor), pity it's no longer supported in any manner by MS. I've had some funny results but mostly it's amazing when I'm doing panoramas and compositions. I found it so much better than the photoshop system which misses more than it hits.

[Dave882 (David)]

Originally Posted by Saturnine

That is a great mineral moon image Dave. As you said, the increased saturation and contrast make for a more interesting full, or nearly full, moon image and brings more detail into the image.

Cheers Jeff - yes I particularly liked the way the saturation revealed 'layers' in the geology - for instance the ejected material from the impact crater strewn over the blue/grey titanium oxide and orange iron oxide underneath. Quite an interesting scene if I may say so myself!

[Dave882 (David)]

Originally Posted by Leo.G

That's a stunning composition Dave!
I keep meaning to do it but we've had so much cloud and rain continually for the past 3-4 years I just haven't bothered.
Plus where I sit my mount I dug a big hole to put my pier in and it keeps filling with water and drilling holes in the bottom of the hole doesn't drain it.

When we've had good days I haven't been well enough and I'm not sitting my mount over a big hole full of water, I know exactly what could go wrong and my luck it will.
I like ICE (Image Composite Editor), pity it's no longer supported in any manner by MS. I've had some funny results but mostly it's amazing when I'm doing panoramas and compositions. I found it so much better than the photoshop system which misses more than it hits.

Thanks Leo I appreciate the comments! Sounds like your obs is really fighting for survival. Hope you can get a break in the weather to get it up and going!
This is the first time I used ICE after reviewing what others recommended online. I found a third party site that I could download it for free and yes, it was extremely easy to use - a great tool for this kind of work!

[Dennis]

Lovely work, I enjoyed my cruise over the lunar surface in the full res version.

I noticed that the limb around Schickard, Wargentin and Schiller in the SW seemed more reddened as did the NW region around Anaximander and Pascal.

The profiles of some of the craters and mountains along the limb really stand out as well.

Nice work.

Dennis.

[Leo.G (Leo)]

ICE was always free but it is getting harder to find which is a real shame when you get to play and realise how easy and amazing it is.
The pier won't go in an observatory unfortunately but having a pier will give me a more permanent set up than slapping a tripod down in the yard on pavers.
I'll get to it eventually.

[Dave882 (David)]

Originally Posted by Leo.G

ICE was always free but it is getting harder to find which is a real shame when you get to play and realise how easy and amazing it is.
The pier won't go in an observatory unfortunately but having a pier will give me a more permanent set up than slapping a tripod down in the yard on pavers.
I'll get to it eventually.

Lol I thought you might build some kind of enclosure around the pier but yes anything that makes the setup/packdown a little easier in this hobby is a good thing! ICE was a real nice surprise for me. I didn’t have too much trouble finding it on line and gosh it performed well!

[Dave882 (David)]

Originally Posted by Dennis

Lovely work, I enjoyed my cruise over the lunar surface in the full res version.

I noticed that the limb around Schickard, Wargentin and Schiller in the SW seemed more reddened as did the NW region around Anaximander and Pascal.

The profiles of some of the craters and mountains along the limb really stand out as well.

Nice work.

Dennis.

Cheers Dennis - I’m glad you enjoyed the view! Since I’m normally taking shots of individual craters rather than such a large area it was a slightly different processing approach but happy that there’s still some detail in the individual craters along the terminator. I also noticed the red hue to some of those crater rims - not sure whether there was some atmospheric impact at play but thought I’d just leave it as is.