I put this together with Fitsworks as suggested in another thread here. I found it handles the onion rings and sharpening really well. Only did a little more in photoshop to complete the image.
Seems stretched a bit thin but you got the detail and no onion rings which plagues these images.
Greg.
I think your original comments were more spot on Greg and I fully concur. I expected more too, but I think several things are going on here. I know there was very thin high cloud about and it can be seen in some of my wifes shots. That may have contributed to it. I also wonder if the dynamic range is being haltered a little. I did only use 8 images for this image as suggested by a tutorial I read and perhaps this is contributing to the problem and as you now say it looks stretched thin. I am planning on perhaps using 30 images and maybe this will give the range I am after??? Time will tell but at least the onion rings are gone and the detail is sharper than previous attempts. If I make a significant improvement I will post an image in this thread.
My only comment is that, particularly around the upper limb, the corona is saturated. You should be able to find one of your shorter exposures and blend that part in.
Ok final repro. I sorted a lot of the noise and to some extent the saturation around the limb. I stacked 35 images and this helped control the noise a lot better.
Click here for the larger image ( I have replaced the other image)
I have also included another smaller image below for comparison from the first one here.
One thing. The moon is jet black. I played around with an image Houghy posted and I could get it to show some lunar detail.
Especially seeing as you used a Nikon D3 which probably has really good shadow detail dynamic range. You may be able to super push and super contrast the moon and get some detail.
Very nice detail Paul. Hope to be able to try it with my data when time allows.
I'm fairly sure we're not going to get truly amazing detail in the corona because these shots are taken at 14degrees altitude in a moist environment - no self respecting imager would try to shoot a masterpiece under such conditions!
Mike, getting the extended corona was my aim for this trip. Next one will be diamond ring and wide field. It was an epic trip for us with over 8000km driven during the last 3.5 weeks.
Rick I was not intending to do that but every time I thought it looked right I would see another tip else where which would further enhance my image.
Greg I will go hunting around, that would be nice to get the moon detail.
David that was my thoughts all along. I noticed during shooting the frames that the seeing was pretty ordinary and I put this down not only to the elevation but the presence of the clouds and the associated moist air surrounding the clouds. Another eclipse I feel.
Nice effort Paul. This is time consuming and difficult processing so you've done very well I think, especially given less than ideal conditions cloud-wise.
Were you following the instructions on this page (adapted for newer version of Fitswork)?:
What settings for the radius/rotation angle of the filter did you end up using? Did you get an ugly black circle inside the corona and then just black out the whole moon?
Phil, yes I followed the somewhat vague instructions on that page. I think the menus are different now to the tutorial. I used an angle of 1.5 and 2 radius. I did not get a ring but the moon does move in the process of imaging this event. So I had to use a slightly larger moon and mask that over the top.
