Lunar 3-panel mosaic @ 4fps

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turfpit
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Lunar 3-panel mosaic @ 4fps

#1

Post by turfpit »

A 3-panel mosaic captured 2nd May 2025, around 21:30 (twilight), 30% illumination, ~45° elevation.

Moon_3-panel_mosaic_183C.jpg
Moon_3-panel_mosaic_183C.jpg (289.73 KiB) Viewed 4671 times

Hardware: Celestron C8 SCT, Celestron AVX mount, Altair 183C, UV/IR-cut/L filter in manual filter wheel, JMI motorised focuser.
Software: SharpCap 4.1, Autostakkert 4, Microsoft Image Composite Editor, Rawtherapee v5, GIMP.
Capture: each panel was SER, RAW8, black_level=0, gain=200, exposure=30ms, duration 127s, frames=500 @ 4fps

20_40_22_UV_IR-cut_L.CameraSettings.txt
(1.37 KiB) Downloaded 223 times

The capture produced 3x9Gb SER files. These were stacked by all 3 being dropped onto the Open button in AS!4.

AS4_settings.JPG
AS4_settings.JPG (142.98 KiB) Viewed 4671 times


60% of frames were stacked (that is frames > 50% quality. The Alignment Point size was set at 144 which gave 804 points. Drizzle was off (not needed with large capture area). Three useful things I noticed with AS!4:
  • Automatic setting of the anchor point (useful for multi file processing)
  • A histogram of the current frame is displayed
  • The active SER file can be played back
The 3 output files were stitched using Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE) to produce a 163Mb TIFF file.

stitch.JPG
stitch.JPG (10.49 KiB) Viewed 4671 times

This did not play well with either Registax6 or waveSharp2. I did use ColourCalibration in PixInsight to achieve colour balance followed by sharpening with MultiscaleMedianTransform.

PixInsight_colour_calibration.JPG
PixInsight_colour_calibration.JPG (28.63 KiB) Viewed 4670 times

However I decided to experiment with Rawtherapee. With the software I managed to achieve colour calibration, RL deconvolution, sharpening, lightening & contrast in one operation. The last part was repeated application of saturation in GIMP to achieve the desired colour effect.

A Rawtherapee article can be found at https://clarkvision.com/articles/astrop ... wtherapee/

A decent outcome for a 10m capture. Getting to grips with Rawtherapee took slightly longer :-( At least I now have a way forward for processing mosaics captured with an OSC camera.

Dave
Leandro Salgueiro
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Re: Lunar 3-panel mosaic @ 4fps

#2

Post by Leandro Salgueiro »

Dave
Very good job, a very good view of the entire moon
Leandro
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turfpit
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Re: Lunar 3-panel mosaic @ 4fps

#3

Post by turfpit »

Thanks Leandro.

Dave
timh
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Re: Lunar 3-panel mosaic @ 4fps

#4

Post by timh »

A very decent outcome Dave. A beautiful image and plenty of good instructions,
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turfpit
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Re: Lunar 3-panel mosaic @ 4fps

#5

Post by turfpit »

Thanks Tim.

Dave
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turfpit
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Re: Lunar 3-panel mosaic @ 4fps

#6

Post by turfpit »

Information taken from Virtual Moon Atlas.
3-panel_mosaic_named_craters.JPG
3-panel_mosaic_named_craters.JPG (46.06 KiB) Viewed 2805 times

Dave
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turfpit
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Re: Lunar 3-panel mosaic @ 4fps

#7

Post by turfpit »

Thanks to oopfan, Menno55, Leandro, kaymann & timh for the interest shown in this image.

Dave
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