Astro photography of the moon

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 The Lemming 09 Feb 2017
I took a load of images of the moon in the hope of stacking them on my computer.

So far I have tried RegiStax 6 but it keeps crashing. Are there any other options for capturing several RAW images of the moon?

I know that all I have to do is point the camera at the moon and fire the shutter, but is there an optimal way of capturing images to stack of the moon?

Am I best actually taking a movie of the moon rather than images?
 d_b 09 Feb 2017
In reply to The Lemming:

You can get surprisingly good images from movie files and lucky imaging. Not sure if it is a better option than just using something like deep sky stacker for the moon though.

One of my mates has had good results with http://www.autostakkert.com/
 Mikkel 09 Feb 2017
In reply to The Lemming:

why you want to stack them?
 d_b 09 Feb 2017
In reply to Mikkel:

You could theoretically get a sharper image with lucky imaging, but I agree that you should generally be able to stay well above the noise floor when shooting something as bright as the moon.
 Mikkel 09 Feb 2017
In reply to davidbeynon:

i got a 500mm lens on a cropped sensor and thought i got ok pictures handheld.
if i had a tripod that could handle the big lens i guess it could be interesting trying stacking and then comparing the result,
 Castleman 09 Feb 2017
In reply to davidbeynon:

> You can get surprisingly good images from movie files


Agree - ET had particularly good shots of the moon.
 d_b 09 Feb 2017
In reply to Castleman:

The bike messed up my attempts to stack the images. Bloody kids!
 Blue Straggler 09 Feb 2017
In reply to Mikkel:

> why you want to stack them?

I am curious as to whether The Lemming will answer this question
OP The Lemming 09 Feb 2017
In reply to Mikkel:

> why you want to stack them?

Because I would like to learn how to do this.
 andi turner 09 Feb 2017
In reply to The Lemming:

I'd definitely use a movie file rather than trying to stack raw, it will keep crashing, especially if you're trying to stack enough images to actually justify stacking. You're as well to just go through your raw images and pic your favourite, maybe produce a coloured moon from it.

In reply to "why stack"; it's a really important method for producing quality planetary, lunar or solar images. As the targets are bright you can only take short exposures, unlike deep space imaging which require really long exposures. The problem with taking short exposures is the atmospheric effect on the image, movement in the air spoils the image a bit like taking a picture of a pebble in a stream. So, to combat this you take hundreds or thousands of images as a movie (depending on how quick your target rotates) then stack a percentage of your sharpest images then clean it up with wavelets. It's a cheap and effective way of producing stunning images.


 Jon Read 09 Feb 2017
In reply to andi turner:

> I'd definitely use a movie file rather than trying to stack raw, it will keep crashing, especially if you're trying to stack enough images to actually justify stacking.

Out of interest, how many would constitute the rough minimum to make stacking worth the processing and capture overhead?
 andi turner 09 Feb 2017
In reply to Jon Read:

It might only take a minute of filming. The processing in registax is only a few minutes also...


OP The Lemming 09 Feb 2017
In reply to andi turner:

> I'd definitely use a movie file rather than trying to stack raw, it will keep crashing,

I shall try a movie file next time.

To stop the software crashing I had to convert to TIFF and used only four images. Obviously ther is room for improvement.


Single
https://www.flickr.com/photos/the1lemming/31986889053/in/dateposted-public/

Stacked
https://www.flickr.com/photos/the1lemming/31958111684/in/dateposted-public/
 Mikkel 09 Feb 2017
In reply to The Lemming:

Thats fair enough

This is my latest handheld shot

https://www.flickr.com/photos/83246699@N00/32068411076/in/dateposted-public...

sounds like your problem with crashing software could be down to lack of memory/processing power compared to the file sizes
 Mikkel 09 Feb 2017
In reply to andi turner:

thanks for that explanation
OP The Lemming 09 Feb 2017
In reply to Mikkel:

> Thats fair enough This is my latest handheld shothttps://www.flickr.com/photos/83246699@N00/32068411076/in/dateposted-public... like your problem with crashing software could be down to lack of memory/processing power compared to the file sizes

That's a great single image taken of the moon. What editing magic did you perform?

You also mentioned that my puter may not be powerful enough to process the images. What would you consider as a good benchmark for a computer to process large volumes of images?

I have an i5 processor at 3.4Ghz and 8Gb of RAM. I've got an extra couple of Gb laying around that I could add if need be.
 Mikkel 09 Feb 2017
In reply to The Lemming:

I just did a little bit in LR then some adjustment to levels in PS and used the Nik collection noise reduction.

OP The Lemming 09 Feb 2017
In reply to The Lemming:

Got some advice from Stargazers Lounge and was advised to edit my RAW images in PiPP software. From there I could use registax to stack the 40 RAW files I took last night. And here's the results.

I'm impressed with the lack of noise weird patterns created by registax. But I can't shake the feeling of double images slightly out of sync creating blurring around the craters.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/the1lemming/31966922274/in/dateposted-public/
In reply to The Lemming:

Registax is an old program now and it might not be able to use all your RAM and features in a modern computer anyway. Traditionally it worked well with webcam images which were 640x480 pixels or similar or modest astronomical CCDs and as Andi says, chugged along fine with that and produced some great images.
If you start throwing 6000x4000 pixel DSLR images at it, it may well grind to a halt because the program might not be able to handle the 100+ mb individual frame images

The moon is a good target as it's so bright you can use movies (eg at 25 frames a second) and still get good images. This allows you to take hundreds or thousands of frames for analysis and the software does a good job of picking the best bits from each frame. I would imagine that a 1920x1080 movie from a DSLR should just about be within its capabilities but it might thrash away for a while processing.

An alternative program you could try is avistack.
 d_b 10 Feb 2017
In reply to richard_hopkins:

Agreed.

To expand on this, as a general rule 32 bit windows software can access up to 2gb of working memory. In theory it could use 4, but the "top" 2gb tend to be reserved by the operating system.

With registry hacks on windows you can increase this to 3 but I don't recommend it.

64 bit software can address more memory than you are likely to be able to buy for the foreseeable future, so use that instead.

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