Harvest Moon, 4-panel mosaic, 2026-09-26

[turfpit]

A Harvest Moon, at 20° elevation, captured as a 4-panel mosaic on 26th Sept 2026 at 21:00. The original TIFF mosaic was 6248x6063 and 213Mb in size.
High resolution version at https://www.astrobin.com/gtcasa/

2026-09-26-2112_9-Moon_Stack2_F0380_DeconL_View_16b_stitch_v3.jpg (893.32 KiB) Viewed 190 times

Equipment: Celestron AVX mount, Celestron C8, 0.63x reducer, UV-IR cut filter, JMI Motofocuser, Altair 183C camera.
Software: SharpCap, Biggsky, Microsft Image Composite Editor, GIMP.
Capture: SER, 5440×3648, RAW8, gain 100, exposure 8ms, 500 frames @ 9fps for each panel.
Processing: Biggsky autostack (76%, 65%, 77%, 50% frames stacked)+ deconvolution & denoise. Microsoft Image Composite Editor. GIMP for saturation, curves, sharpening. Scaled to 40% for forum.

4-panel mosaic captured at 22:00 with an Altair 183M using a Baader 610nm red pass filter. Biggsky stacked 89%, 90%, 89%, 90% in the 4 panels.

2026-09-26-2149_7-Moon_Stack2_F0444_Decon_View_16b_stitch_GIMP_scaled40p.jpg (896.31 KiB) Viewed 190 times

Dave

[admin]

Hi Dave,

thanks for sharing - a nice pair of images

I always think of the moon as a bit of a paradoxical target - it's easy to get *something* of the moon, and certainly easier to capture than the planets or the sun, but getting just the right amount of processing so that your final image is neither fuzzy or over sharpened is actually a pretty tough challenge. I think you have got that bit right in both of these

cheers,

Robin

[turfpit]

Thanks Robin, only took 10 years to get there. SharpCap and BiggSky have made it possible to produce images such as these.

Dave