Endymion, Atlas, Hercules, Posidonius

[turfpit]

2020-03-29 @ 21:20 BST. High res image here https://www.astrobin.com/jjvzss/?nc=user
Celestron AVX mount, Celestron C8, Teleskop f6.3 reducer, IR685 filter, QHY5LII-M camera.
2000 frame SER videos @ 29fps, capture time 2 minutes, 2.4Gb data.
1280x960, MONO8, gain=10, exposure=14.5ms.
Stack best 20% of 2000 in Autostakkert!3, GIMP 2.10 processing.
The craters run top to bottom with Endymion at the top.

Endymion-Atlas-Hercules-Posidonius.jpg (119.87 KiB) Viewed 1059 times

21_20_48.CameraSettings.txt

(609 Bytes) Downloaded 104 times

Dave

[turfpit]

Some info about the capture process for this image.

Endymion-capture.png (263.81 KiB) Viewed 1057 times

• Although the image looks dark, the right hand side of the histogram is at 60%, which is a good saturation value for a lunar image. If the image looks right then it will be too bright and features will be lost. The FX tool option in the toolbar Show over exposed can be helpful obtaining the correct settings. When setting the exposure I always increase the Zoom to between 100 and 150%.

• Increase the Zoom to between 100 and 150% to assist with focusing. Try to concentrate on an object such as a crater which has features in the bottom

• The exposure in this capture was 14.5ms. Lower exposure is key to a fast frame rate. The frame rate is displayed bottom left. To decrease the exposure, the gain can be increased.

• Frames per second is king in lunar imaging, hence my use of MONO8. If the atmospheric conditions are good, 16-bit captures (with half the frame rate) can produce good results.

• The gain is set to 10 (out of 29). This is around 30%. For lunar work I use a range 30 - 40%. This can depend on atmospherics and the illumination.

• The offset is set to 1 which is the lowest possible value. There is no danger of black level clipping and all data received by the camera is bright anyway. Offset is also shown as black-level or brightness in other cameras.

• The USB settings of Speed = 2 and USB Traffic = 0 give the fastest fps for the QHY5LII-M. If dropped frames count at the bottom left is incrementing then adjust these settings.

• The histogram is undocked (personal preference) and the Logarithmic box checked.

I usually take a small SER file of approximately 100 frames and play this back in SER Player to check figures, especially the histogram saturation. SER Player can be downloaded here https://sites.google.com/site/astropipp/ser-player.

Dave

SER-Player.JPG (45.8 KiB) Viewed 1057 times

[umasscrew39]

Great image and great info, Dave! Thanks for sharing.