1858 replies to this topic

[james7ca]

I took this mosaic with a celestron nexstar 4se and a svbony sv305 camera.  It is a composite of 10 images stitched together using microsoft ice.  For my first mosaic I feel this is really good, any advice on how to improve my image?

 

 

Link to image here:

https://www.astrobin.com/9jqkv6/

That's a very good image and sharp for a 4" scope.

 

As for "any advice" I'd try to lighten up the terminator and also remove the green/red artifacts that appear in one small area along the bright limb of the moon. Also, the black level of the background sky isn't completely uniform or totally black and I can see parts of the boundary/frame of the mosaic in the sky that appears towards the top of the image. As for the latter, your display may not be showing those boundaries but you can temporarily brighten the image (with a levels adjustment) to show them and thus determine when they are completely gone (either to fully black or at a uniform level across the background sky).

[osbourne one-nil]

Here's another shot taken with my SD103. It comprises three views, stitched together in Photoshop, each of 500 frames at 3.5ms. I added the flattener to the scope this time, although I'm not sure the small sensor of the ASI678 requires it?

 

I've tried to keep the view natural, which means it's a bit dark along the terminator but it does prevent the bright areas being blown out. 

 

[whiskeyzebra11]

This past Saturday 2024-04-13, I did some quick Lunar imaging before turning to deep sky. I've typically focused on small features to get 100+ FPS from my ASI678MC camera, but the 5-day-old Moon fit in my camera's FOV so I thought to take a quick capture not expecting much. I think this image came out well for such a low frame count and really liked the way I could zoom in and see some of the limb features I had never noticed before. 

Virtuoso 150p 6" tabletop dob
SharpCap/AS4/Wavesharp

Link to the larger view on CN
 

Edited by whiskeyzebra11, 17 April 2024 - 04:39 PM.

[Matt78]

I took this mosaic with a celestron nexstar 4se and a svbony sv305 camera. It is a composite of 10 images stitched together using microsoft ice. For my first mosaic I feel this is really good, any advice on how to improve my image?


Link to image here:
https://www.astrobin.com/9jqkv6/

I’m not really one who should comment on stacking or wavelets except to say that it looks excellent to my eye. I will also say the range looks pretty good. I don’t see much if any in the way of clipped whites.

My idea for you is to try taking it again at three different exposure values, and try making it into a HDR image. One exposed just right, one overexposed to provide good detail in the shadows, one underexposed to provide better detail in the highlights. There’s numerous programs that can make a HDR. Photoshop and Lightroom can. I’d bet that GIMP (free software) can but it may need a plugin (no doubt also free). I had a friend that used to use a different piece of software that cost a couple hundred, forget the name.

If you are using a Barlow, you could try removing it, so you don’t have to make 30 images. I’ll bet you would still get a great result with fewer images.

[Matt78]

earth shine

1790 Peter Dollond triplet refractor
Capture 2024-03-12T20_04_10pdolmbrtpe.jpg

That telescope sounds unbelievable. One of the first apos ever I’m guessing? Can we see what it can do on some craters or a mare? So cool. Mr Dollond probably never imagined in a million years his telescope was going to be taking digital photos (or any photos) and have them bounced around the world to be viewed by us.

[Dave Mitsky]

Here's an image of the Moon that I took on Monday night using my Seestar S50.  The Lunar V and Lunar X were visible at the time.

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[james7ca]

A daytime image of today's waxing gibbous moon taken from a fixed tripod with a Nikon Z8 and a NIKKOR VR 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G zoom lens (300mm, f/8.0, 1/100s, ISO64). Image processing with Photoshop 2024.

 

This is a single frame although I have a 48 image sequence that I may try to drizzle to increase the detail.

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Edited by james7ca, 18 April 2024 - 10:37 PM.

[james7ca]

Here is the result from a drizzle of 36 of the 48 subs that I took with the Nikkor 70-300mm zoom lens. IMO, it's an improvement from the single frame image that I posted above and for the drizzled result (shown below) I used the full image scale as captured at 300mm whereas before I reduced the image to help with the quality. That said, I don't really know whether the drizzle made any improvements over what I would have gotten from a simple stack of 36 frames. Image processing with PixInsight, AutoStakkert!, Registax, and Photoshop 2024.

 

The effective aperture of the 300mm lens at f/8 is approximately 38mm.

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Edited by james7ca, 19 April 2024 - 02:24 AM.

[bobsdobs]

First outing with my ASI678MC that I got last week. I wanted something a bit better than the 533MC for the moon. I appreciate the Z73 isn't an ideal high power scope and the resolution is definitely quite limited, but I need to make do with what I have for now. Maybe next year I'll be able to afford a larger aperture SCT. Gonna have some fun with this rig in the meantime!

 

WO Z73

ASI678MC

Captured with SharpCap

Stacked with AutoStakkert, processed in PixInsight, Small contrast enhancement in GIMP

 

Edited by bobsdobs, 19 April 2024 - 03:07 AM.

[Matt78]

I’m not really one who should comment on stacking or wavelets except to say that it looks excellent to my eye. I will also say the range looks pretty good. I don’t see much if any in the way of clipped whites.

My idea for you is to try taking it again at three different exposure values, and try making it into a HDR image. One exposed just right, one overexposed to provide good detail in the shadows, one underexposed to provide better detail in the highlights. There’s numerous programs that can make a HDR. Photoshop and Lightroom can. I’d bet that GIMP (free software) can but it may need a plugin (no doubt also free). I had a friend that used to use a different piece of software that cost a couple hundred, forget the name.

If you are using a Barlow, you could try removing it, so you don’t have to make 30 images. I’ll bet you would still get a great result with fewer images.

Tristan, I wanted to say that what I suggested is easier said than done. Yesterday I went out and tried taking an HDR sun disk. I shot three sets, and I ran into issues processing the overexposed in AutoStakkert having weird artifacts. After I took care of that in AS4, I managed to sharpen in WaveSharp, then I stacked them as an HDR in Lightroom. It had weird issues around the sunspots, and looked just overall strange up close. I'm sure this CAN be done, but be warned it's not all that simple! Clear skies.
 

[james7ca]

Here is Friday night's gibbous moon taken shortly after sunset using a Nikon Z8 with a 500mm Reflex-NIKKOR mirror lens and a TC-200 2X teleconverter all mounted on a fixed photo tripod (e.f.l. 1000mm, f/16, ISO320, 1/80s). Image processing with PixInsight, AutoStakkert! (best 40 of 64 frames), Registax, and Photoshop 2024.

 

Ken Rockwell says that this is really a 75mm aperture, f/6.7 lens and that Nikon marketed it back in the 1980s as an f/8 because that is its T-stop, not an F-ratio as we would typically use in astrophotography (i.e. like saying that an 8" SCT with a focal length of 80" is an f/10 scope).

 

I've found that the teleconverter definitely adds color fringing to the Reflex-NIKKOR unless the focus is just right, but I don't know if that is the sharpest focus or just the most color free. It's also pretty hard to focus the lens with the moon drifting quite rapidly across the magnified preview image. The focus would be easier to manage if the camera/lens were on on tracking mount, but that would negate some of the advantages of this simple setup.

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Edited by james7ca, 20 April 2024 - 05:40 PM.

[james7ca]

Here is a 1:1 crop from the above image that shows what kind of resolution I'm getting with this setup (Nikon Z8 with 500mm Reflex-NIKKOR and 2X teleconverter). The above full-disk image was reduced in size to fit within the CN posting guidelines. This 1:1 crop is a little noisy but that could be addressed with a longer sequence of frames, but then you'd need a tracking mount or perhaps multiple sequences with a recentering of the moon for each set.

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Edited by james7ca, 20 April 2024 - 01:36 AM.

[TristanE]

That's a very good image and sharp for a 4" scope.

 

As for "any advice" I'd try to lighten up the terminator and also remove the green/red artifacts that appear in one small area along the bright limb of the moon. Also, the black level of the background sky isn't completely uniform or totally black and I can see parts of the boundary/frame of the mosaic in the sky that appears towards the top of the image. As for the latter, your display may not be showing those boundaries but you can temporarily brighten the image (with a levels adjustment) to show them and thus determine when they are completely gone (either to fully black or at a uniform level across the background sky).

I took a look at the photo on another computer and those frames are super noticeable, thanks for pointing that out.

[TristanE]

I’m not really one who should comment on stacking or wavelets except to say that it looks excellent to my eye. I will also say the range looks pretty good. I don’t see much if any in the way of clipped whites.

My idea for you is to try taking it again at three different exposure values, and try making it into a HDR image. One exposed just right, one overexposed to provide good detail in the shadows, one underexposed to provide better detail in the highlights. There’s numerous programs that can make a HDR. Photoshop and Lightroom can. I’d bet that GIMP (free software) can but it may need a plugin (no doubt also free). I had a friend that used to use a different piece of software that cost a couple hundred, forget the name.

If you are using a Barlow, you could try removing it, so you don’t have to make 30 images. I’ll bet you would still get a great result with fewer images.

Next time I have an opportunity to shoot the moon I will try this out, unfortunately I haven't had clear skies since I took that mosaic and there are supposed to be clouds for the foreseeable future... 

[bobsdobs]

Last night's Copernicus before it got properly dark. Still don't really know what I'm doing processing wise. Cropped my ROI in too much in SharpCap and lost some nice rim detail on the RHS. It's hard not to feel the images are somewhat lacklustre compared to what you guys are getting with the big guns  Also possibly pushing the limit a bit with a 2x barlow for such a small aperture, I think it puts me around f/12 on a 2 micron camera.

 

WO Z73

ASI 687MC

Celetron XCel 2x Barlow

 

 

Edited by bobsdobs, 20 April 2024 - 02:50 PM.

[bobsdobs]

One more from last night

 

Edited by bobsdobs, 20 April 2024 - 02:49 PM.

[james7ca]

Saturday night's gibbous moon. This is a single frame shot taken with a Nikon Z8 using a 500mm Reflex-NIKKOR mirror lens and a TC-200 2X teleconverter all mounted on a fixed photo tripod. There were some thin low clouds when I took this image and that probably lowered the contrast but I don't think it affected the sharpness that much. This is about a 50% reduction from the original capture scale.

 

Image processing with Photoshop 2024. Additional capture details are in the image captions.

 

I have several hundred frames that I took in high-speed burst mode while letting the moon drift across the field and over the next day or two I'll work on stacking and processing those for an improved image.

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Edited by james7ca, 21 April 2024 - 01:09 AM.

[james7ca]

Here is the stacked version of the above capture. This is the best 96 of 331 frames as processed by AutoStakkert!, Registax, PixInsight, and Photoshop 2024. Same capture details as earlier and detailed in the image captions.

 

It looks like the clouds were worse than I thought as AutoStakkert! showed a marked decrease in quality and brightness about half way through the sequence.

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[james7ca]

Here is a 1:1 crop from the above image showing the craters Copernicus and Aristarchus. Same equipment and details as in the earlier posts.

 

[UPDATE]

Uploaded a slightly brighter version.

[/UPDATE]

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Edited by james7ca, 21 April 2024 - 07:13 AM.

[Dave Mitsky]

Here's a hand-held afocal photo of the almost Pink Full Moon that I took using my iPhone, my 6mm Tele Vue Delos eyepiece, and my 72mm f/6 Astro-Tech 72EDII refractor.

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Edited by Dave Mitsky, 23 April 2024 - 12:55 PM.

[Dave Mitsky]

This is another one of my afocal iPhone photographs from this morning.

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[Dave Mitsky]

The sky was almost completely overcast tonight but enough of the Moon was shining through that I was able to take some rather poor photos with a hand-held Canon PowerShot SX700 HS camera.  Here's one of them.

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[Dennis_Oz]

This was taken with the Canon RF 200-800mm f/6.3-9 IS USM lens and RF x1.4 Extender, on the Canon EOS R7 fitted to my Tak EM200 Mount.

 

The lens has an aperture of approx. 89mm.

 

FL=1120mm at F13, ISO 400 at 1/125 sec. A stack of 25 frames.

 

Dennis.

 

Edited by Dennis_Oz, 24 April 2024 - 03:11 AM.

[Bob Campbell]

This was taken with the Canon RF 200-800mm f/6.3-9 IS USM lens and RF x1.4 Extender, on the Canon EOS R7 fitted to my Tak EM200 Mount.

 

The lens has an aperture of approx. 89mm.

 

FL=1120mm at F13, ISO 400 at 1/125 sec. A stack of 25 frames.

 

Dennis.

 

R7 200to800 RF1x4_100_WS Crop 1600.jpg

that's one heck of a lens!

 

https://www.ephotozi...on-review-36695

 

Bob

Edited by Bob Campbell, 24 April 2024 - 01:45 PM.

[Dennis_Oz]

that's one heck of a lens!

 

https://www.ephotozi...on-review-36695

 

Bob

Being able to track the Moon on the equatorial mount and grab 25 frames for stacking contributed to the overall image quality. I used Autostakkert!3 to Align the frames and then Wavesharp for deconvolution before finishing in Photoshop.

 

Here is a full resolution 1600x1600 crop from the finished stack.

 

Dennis