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old_frankland
professor emeritus
Reged: 03/28/05
Posts: 520
Loc: San Francisco Bay Area
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Seeing conditions have been very disappointing this year here in the Livermore Valley, 30 miles south east of San Francisco. Last weekend we had some good nights of very good transparency, but none too steady air. Despite the only fair seeing, I was able to come up with lunar crater close-ups with relatively good resolution. Certainly, some of the best I have done to date with the C9 and DMK21.
Really itching for some truly good seeing!
http://www.lafterhall.com/lunar_craters.html
Having some kind of good time now.
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Cheers,
Jim
Livermore CA
http://www.lafterhall.com/astro.html
3" APO, 4" ED refractor, 9" SCT, GM8
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Freddy WILLEMS
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 11/13/05
Posts: 2557
Loc: Hawaii, Honolulu
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*BLEEP* Jim !!
That a hell of a collection !!!!
Did you use barlow ??
How many frames stacked for each image ?
Man those look great!!
Freddy
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Freddy
Meade 14" LX200 GPS UHTC GPS on permanent pier
Celestron C 14" Peltier cooled for planetary imaging.
Meade 10" LX200 & TITAN 50:1 mount Gemini 'go to'
Meade 127 mm f/9 APO & TITAN 50:1 mount Gemini 'go to'
W/O 102 mm f/7 APO doublet
Orion 80 mm f/7 ED
DFK 21AU04.AS
ToUcam 840 II pro
Canon 10D Unmoddified
Canon 40D Hutech moddified
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old_frankland
professor emeritus
Reged: 03/28/05
Posts: 520
Loc: San Francisco Bay Area
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Thanks, Freddy. Yeah, pretty sure I used a 3x Barlow for all of the images. One or two may have been with a 2.5x Barlow.
Most of the AVIs were 4000 frames, but the final stacked image, processed in AVIStack, are equivlent to 250 frames. Transparency was great, but lots of turbulence. The AVIs didn't look very promising but the software pulled out the good stuff for the final images.
Most rewarding.
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Cheers,
Jim
Livermore CA
http://www.lafterhall.com/astro.html
3" APO, 4" ED refractor, 9" SCT, GM8
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wes
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 11/13/03
Posts: 1019
Loc: Oklahoma
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Hi Jim,
Excellent! images all of them,Schiller and Doppelmayer really stand out IMO.
Thanks,
Wes Higgins
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old_frankland
professor emeritus
Reged: 03/28/05
Posts: 520
Loc: San Francisco Bay Area
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Thanks, Wes. Really looking forward to some truly good seeing to see how much more image resolution can be had with my setup.
Crater Hainzel is my favorite. I have never looked closely at this crater before. Very complex with amazing wall terracing.
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Cheers,
Jim
Livermore CA
http://www.lafterhall.com/astro.html
3" APO, 4" ED refractor, 9" SCT, GM8
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RedIrocZ-28
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 09/18/05
Posts: 1186
Loc: Grand Rapids, Michigan
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Jim, those are jawdroppers! Very nice. 
Yes, seeing is king, you will know it when you see it. The clarity is breathtaking as you scan across the Moon's surface!
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DaemonGPF
Post Laureate
Reged: 03/22/08
Posts: 3572
Loc: New Mexico
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When can we expect a full mosaic at that resolution? LOL
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-Josh
http://cleardarksky.com/c/AlbuqNMkey.html
My AP Gallery
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old_frankland
professor emeritus
Reged: 03/28/05
Posts: 520
Loc: San Francisco Bay Area
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Quote:
When can we expect a full mosaic at that resolution? LOL
I may be a lunatic, but I'm not totally mad......
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Cheers,
Jim
Livermore CA
http://www.lafterhall.com/astro.html
3" APO, 4" ED refractor, 9" SCT, GM8
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sfugardi
sage
Reged: 09/30/06
Posts: 332
Loc: CT
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Jim, Stunning lunar images! I tried capturing some shots this week with my C11/DMK21 and a 1.8x barlow, but ended up with overexposed & powdery looking images. I tried different filters, R, G, B, & IR pass, with the last cutting through the seeing the best. Which filter (if any) did you use?
I shot at 60fps and cut back on the gain to keep the peak of the histogram at approx 2/3. Where is your histogram while capturing?
For processing, I adjust the Registax sliders 1,2,3 which I use for planetary processing, and the result was not smooth like yours. Which sliders do you adjust?
Sorry for all these questions, but those images are incredible. Any help would be really appreciated. Thanks for posting them!
Regards,
Steve
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1986 Compustar C11
Toucam, DMK21 + IFW Wheel
ST-4/C90, Nikon D70s
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kraterkid
Post Laureate
Reged: 03/07/05
Posts: 4551
Loc: Jacumba, California
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Fantastic images Jim, The view of Schiller is just breathtaking, but every image you produced in this session is superb! Great work.
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Rich
My CN Gallery
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old_frankland
professor emeritus
Reged: 03/28/05
Posts: 520
Loc: San Francisco Bay Area
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Quote:
Jim, Stunning lunar images! I tried capturing some shots this week with my C11/DMK21 and a 1.8x barlow, but ended up with overexposed & powdery looking images. I tried different filters, R, G, B, & IR pass, with the last cutting through the seeing the best. Which filter (if any) did you use?
I shot at 60fps and cut back on the gain to keep the peak of the histogram at approx 2/3. Where is your histogram while capturing?
For processing, I adjust the Registax sliders 1,2,3 which I use for planetary processing, and the result was not smooth like yours. Which sliders do you adjust?
Sorry for all these questions, but those images are incredible. Any help would be really appreciated. Thanks for posting them!
Regards,
Steve
Hi Steve
I don't use the histogram for imaging, I've worked enough with my camera/laptop combination to judge exposure from the screen image, though a couple of these images were a bit under exposed. The lunar surface is far too dynaimc a mix of dark and light for the histogram to be consistently useful.
There is no easy, or consistent answer to determining which shutter, gain and gamma settings to use. You really need to spend time working with your setup refining what you see on the screen. One big tip for doing this is not to be jumping around between barlows and filters. Go for an image scale that works for the prevailing seeing conditions, use a single filter and shoot various exposures, keeping notes so you can pick the best setting combination later while image processing.
A green filter is variously considered the standard for lunar imaging. A red and near IR filter can sometimes help in turbulent seeing. Those lucky enough to have really steady seeing can profit from a blue filter which has the effect of upping image resolution.
These images were shot with only the IR block filter.
Image AVIs were processed in AviStack, then some sharpening in RegiStax.
I tend to be pretty conservative with the sharpening in RegiStax. For wide field lunar shots I tend to use slider 1. For these close ups I used slider 2 or slider 3, or a combination of both. Slider one would only bring up the noise in the image.
Hope this helps.
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Cheers,
Jim
Livermore CA
http://www.lafterhall.com/astro.html
3" APO, 4" ED refractor, 9" SCT, GM8
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sfugardi
sage
Reged: 09/30/06
Posts: 332
Loc: CT
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Jim, thanks for taking the time to reply back. Of course, I was hoping for an easy solution, but it does make sense to evaluate different settings to determine what's best for my scope setup. I've tried to use avistack for planets but it always errored out at the end. I'll give it another try with my recent lunar data. For sharpening, it sounds like you need unique settings for lunar processing, but at least I am using the right sliders. I really appreciate your advice and as I get decent images, I'll post them. Take care
Regards,
Steve
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1986 Compustar C11
Toucam, DMK21 + IFW Wheel
ST-4/C90, Nikon D70s
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old_frankland
professor emeritus
Reged: 03/28/05
Posts: 520
Loc: San Francisco Bay Area
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Steve, I too have had no luck using AviStack for the planets, but it is most excellent for lunar imaging.
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Cheers,
Jim
Livermore CA
http://www.lafterhall.com/astro.html
3" APO, 4" ED refractor, 9" SCT, GM8
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tjensen
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 02/16/05
Posts: 1589
Loc: Chapel Hill, NC
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I've got AVIStack to work on planets. You can see my comparison here. But I found Registax was faster and easier for planetary images.
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old_frankland
professor emeritus
Reged: 03/28/05
Posts: 520
Loc: San Francisco Bay Area
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Quote:
I've got AVIStack to work on planets. You can see my comparison here. But I found Registax was faster and easier for planetary images.
Question: what was the image scale relative to the camera frame size? Or, relative to the vertical image dimension, what percentage of the frame height did the planet cover?
Thanks.
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Cheers,
Jim
Livermore CA
http://www.lafterhall.com/astro.html
3" APO, 4" ED refractor, 9" SCT, GM8
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tjensen
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 02/16/05
Posts: 1589
Loc: Chapel Hill, NC
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Quote:
Question: what was the image scale relative to the camera frame size? Or, relative to the vertical image dimension, what percentage of the frame height did the planet cover?
That's a good question. I'd have to go back and check. The image was captured with a ToUcam and 3x barlow at 640x480 on a 10" SCT. Off the top of my head, I'd say the image covered about 30% or maybe 150 pixels or so. But that's a guess.
Tim
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Brian Albin
Seeker
Reged: 08/22/06
Posts: 539
Loc: Western Oregon
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That’ll make old Selden hide in his hole!
I like the sea waves contrast study in the bay of Rainbows picture.
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- Brian
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RobertED
professor emeritus
Reged: 07/11/03
Posts: 1192
Loc: Johnston, RI
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Awesome photos!!!
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