93MP 53 Pane Mosaic of a 50% Moon 02-03-20

[matt_baker298]

A couple of people have requested that I post my Lunar image on here for all to see and to go into a tad more detail.

 

Imaging telescope: Celestron C14 @ 3910mm

Imaging camera: QHYCCD 5L ll M

Mount: Celestron CGE

Software: Autostakkert! 3, PixInsight 1.8, Photoshop

 

Now this isn't my own personal C14, it is my schools but I'm allowed to use it whenever since I have a key.

 

This is by far the best set of images I've taken. The temperature was cold, the Moon was high, seeing conditions were perfect. Nothing could've gone any better.

 

Here's a rundown on how I achieved this:

 

After all was aligned and I slewed over, I loaded up SharpCap and IMerge

For those who don't know what IMerge is, it's a program perfect for Solar and Lunar mosaics that takes the first frame of the video file and you can align multiple of these to make sure you're getting enough overlap.

 

I aligned my camera so that the terminator was straight and started right from the edge and down through the terminator, working progressively through the surface. I made sure to have a hefty amount of overlap since the CGE is old and there's considerable DEC backlash, plus tracking at 3910mm is already hard enough for the mount with how heavy everything is, so I had to account for any drift while taking the video. If there was any drift, I would counter it with the hand controller to make sure it would stay near enough central. Making sure all the panes were lined up, I went and captured a total of 53 of them for the whole mosaic. Also I went to the brightest part of the moon and exposed for about 90% of the histogram to prevent any highlight clipping, not touching the slider for the rest of the night. It took a total of about 2 to 2 1/2 hours to complete, with my dad and I sitting in about -2 degrees for the whole time but I had a lot of determination. There were a couple of panels I was unsure about the alignment of, so I went and took them again at those areas since there was no room for any error.

 

I also have thought about selling prints from a professional company but I'm not sure how many people locally would be interested as I'd have to make a batch order to save on postage costs

 

Now onto the processing side. I have actually made a video on this, so I'll link it here but if anyone has any questions or queries, I'm very happy to answer any.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V89Qg_oxCgk

 

I also made a video illustrating how detail there really is in the final image

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m_9sw_FDp4

 

Here's the final image in all it's 93MP glory:

 

 

Edited May 26, 2020 by matt_baker298

[Bottletopburly]

Well done Matt thanks for posting your work flow hadn’t heard of imerge before a superb effort 🏆

[+RonC]

That's a great image Matt, well done and thanks for posting the details 👍

[BAZ]

That's a lovely image. I am visual only, but can appreciate the effort and time that goes into one image. I am looking forward to seeing further work.

[matt_baker298]

Thanks guys!

[+Glafnazur]

Great image Matt, I am also looking forward to seeing more images 🙂