2 replies to this topic

[james7ca]

This is the best 64 of 96 still frames that were taken using pixel shifting on a Nikon Z8 with a NIKKOR Z 180-600mm f/5.6-6.3 lens. Image processing with PixInsight (crop and conversion to raw CFA FIT format), AutoStakkert! (1.5X drizzle), Registax (wavelet sharpening), and Photoshop 2024 (tweaks and labels). There are additional capture details in the captions.

 

The moon was only at 21 degrees in altitude when this was taken and thus the seeing conditions weren't very good but I'm satisfied with the result given the zoom lens and "short" stack of frames. I was also using a non-tracking photo tripod to hold the camera/lens and that allowed the moon to drift slightly within the frame thus assisting in the pixel-shifting "dither" and allowing fairly good coverage for the drizzled stack.

 

You can see what a single frame processing looks like that was taken just a few minutes before this series over in the "Small bore challenge: the Moon w/ 6" or less" thread __HERE__ on CN.

 

Attached Thumbnails

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Edited by james7ca, 19 July 2024 - 08:42 AM.

[RichA]

Pretty remarkable considering the moon only occupies about 1/9th of the 35mm frame width normally with the lens at 600mm.

[james7ca]

Pretty remarkable considering the moon only occupies about 1/9th of the 35mm frame width normally with the lens at 600mm.

Yes, I'm always surprised when I see how small the moon appears within the field of a full-frame camera, even with a 600mm lens. However, the Nikon Z8 has 45 megapixels and with the 1.5X drizzle that means I'm working with about 67 megapixels, although the Z8 does support a square format that is smaller than full frame. That said, the full frame does work well on my 9.25" EdgeHD since that has a flat, fully corrected field at a 2350mm focal length that nicely frames the full moon. With really good seeing and a good dither it should be possible to do a 2X drizzle when using the Z8 on my EdgeHD and that would produce a 180 megapixel, full-frame image of the moon that would be approaching critical sampling on a full-disk image of the moon. However, I'm not certain whether either AutoStakkert! or Registax would work on an image that large, so that's something that will probably have to wait until I have a computer with more DRAM and for the software to catch up to these really large images.

However, I have done a 1.5X drizzle with the Z8 on my EdgeHD but to do that I cropped the original frame to a much smaller region surrounding the crater Ptolemaeus. I posted that to CN back in April and __HERE__ is a link to that image.

Edited by james7ca, 19 July 2024 - 10:06 PM.