Re: Frame dropping in lunar imaging. It's the computer!
Posted: Tue May 05, 2026 10:09 am
Tim
Looks like you are sorted now with a practical solution. Unsociable hours for the moon this week - a 5am start. The next lunar cycle gives us high elevation for the waxing moon - the best conditions of the year. I use https://www.timeanddate.com/moon/uk/manchester for planning, the location will need changing.
I went through something similar a few months ago. I used to use a QHY5LII-M with capture area 1280x960. No problems with buffering or disk space.
After purchase of the Skyris 236m, captures of MONO8, 1920x1200, 3000 frames at 54fps means 6gb in ~1m. I now typically capture 100Gb/h of lunar images. My backup drive for capture data is 4Tb which is in need of a severe pruning. I am thinking that once a SER file has been through stack + decon, I can delete the SER and retain the stack.
I am now at the stage of thinking more about framing the shots. Certainly Southern Region images inverted 180° have generated more interest on Astrobin.
Welcome to the Lunie bin!
Dave
Looks like you are sorted now with a practical solution. Unsociable hours for the moon this week - a 5am start. The next lunar cycle gives us high elevation for the waxing moon - the best conditions of the year. I use https://www.timeanddate.com/moon/uk/manchester for planning, the location will need changing.
I went through something similar a few months ago. I used to use a QHY5LII-M with capture area 1280x960. No problems with buffering or disk space.
After purchase of the Skyris 236m, captures of MONO8, 1920x1200, 3000 frames at 54fps means 6gb in ~1m. I now typically capture 100Gb/h of lunar images. My backup drive for capture data is 4Tb which is in need of a severe pruning. I am thinking that once a SER file has been through stack + decon, I can delete the SER and retain the stack.
I am now at the stage of thinking more about framing the shots. Certainly Southern Region images inverted 180° have generated more interest on Astrobin.
- Plato_comparison.JPG (58.78 KiB) Viewed 148 times
Welcome to the Lunie bin!
Dave