SharpCap Forums

Captured 2020-06-01 around 22:50. Conditions intermittent wind and poor seeing with thin cloud gradually forming.
The Wratten #56 Light Green filter has the following properties - 50% transmission, increase contrast & reduce glare.
https://www.britastro.org/node/13609



Info from Virtual Moon Atlas.



Equipment: Celestron AVX Mount, Celestron C8, Wratten #56 Light Green Filter, QHY5LII-M.
Software: SharpCap 3.2, PIPP, Autostakkert, GIMP 2.10.
Capture: 5000 frame SER video, 800x600 @ 45 fps.

The intermittent wind, around 7mph, caused the telescope to judder. The initial stack was poorly aligned. I pre-processed the SER file using PIPP's image stabilisation features Anchor Feature Box (AFB) and Area of Interest (AOI) https://sites.google.com/site/astropipp ... e/example8. This resulted in 662 (of 5000) frames of which the best 25% were stacked.


Dave

Absolutely incredible, Dave! Good write-up. Lots of experience went into that.

Brian

Thanks Brian.

This demos the value of statistics - 5,000 captured, 662 of decent quality (allowing for wind), 165 stacked for the final image. I reckon it has taken 2 years and 2 one-day lunar imaging workshops with a world class lunar imager, http://www.damianpeach.com/lunarindex.htm , to get to grips with lunar imaging. I really need a USB3 camera down to move forward so that 20,000/30,000 frames is a normal capture.

Dave

A while ago I came across this NASA APOD entitled "Sunrise at Tycho". Take a look at Dave's image and find Tycho's central peak. Notice that there is a large mountain with a smaller hill to the east. Now compare it to this:

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130104.html

That was captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) in 2011. Flip back and forth between Dave's image and the LRO image. You can see the geometry!

You want to see something really cool? Notice in the LRO image, at the top of the mountain is a boulder sitting in a depression. Check this out:

http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/posts/384

That boulder is 120 meters wide, about the length of 1.5 American football fields.

Brian