[Theme] Show us your best moon (and solar system) images

[ColinM]

Great results Øivind

[Hugh_3170]

Excellent outcome here Øivind, your latest stage of your evolving lunar and astro-photography journey, which many of us are enjoying.

I could not resist doing another two-frame stitch, about the same day after John's capture. Seeing was actually pretty bad compared to my first attempt with the planetary camera, with the moon twisting and wobbling. But the stacking and wavelet sharpening was able to rescue it. Stacked 25% of 2000 video frames. For larger view open image in new tab and click it.
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Just to give some idea about the process, this is what the Tycho crater looks like at 100% crop before application of the wavelet sharpening in WaveSharp. It is quite diffuse, but notice how smooth the stacking has made it,  This is the reason that the strong wavelet transform can be applied without creating much noise. The details are there, pulled out of the best frames, just with low micro-contrast. This differs from deep space photography where the low noise levels due to the stacking is used to pull up the dark parts of the image.
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[Øivind Tøien]

Thanks John, Colin and Hugh. Yes figuring out how to do these things and the challenge of testing the limits of relatively simple equipment is part of the fun.

[Øivind Tøien]

A member of the Cloudy Nights forum pointed out the Apollo 11 landing site in his capture today, with the 3 craters named after astronauts identified. I checked my stitched image in post #1006 above, and found the Armstrong crater indicated by the red arrow in the 100% crop below. The actual landing site is slightly south-east of the crater. Not bad at all for a 300mm lens with a little extra help.

[Øivind Tøien]

Yesterday it was time for a capture of the recent active sunspot regions with the same camera as the lunar capture. In the mean time I have improved my ZWO ASI678MC camera by adding a cheap generic L-bracket to hold my red dot sight.
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However the red dot sight cannot be used against the sun, so another solution was needed. I played with the thought of adding screening and an astrosolar film behind the mirror of the red dot sight, but with a little searching I found the much simpler recipe for a solar finder: a simple 4" tube with a 1mm pinhole in one end and a frosted cap in the other end, which I quickly put together. I had just happened to buy some spare tripod clamps for my setups to attach it to the camera.
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Then the practical test; the solar finder worked very well with a little adjustment, although the micro-adjustment of the framing is still a bit of a challenge. The large AR 3282 is shown in the northern hemisphere, with a whole train of sunspots further south. The solar north pole is to the upper right. The seeing was pretty bad and jittery, but lucky imaging with a stack of the best 6% of about 2000 frames captured at 47fps and 1ms exposures saved it. (Open image in new tab and click for possible larger view.)
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[Akira]

Amazing solar image, Øivind!

It is a bit surprising that even a solar image requires stacking multiple images...

[Erik Lund]

Very clear image! Thank you for sharing

[Øivind Tøien]

Thanks Erik and Akira,
Similarly to planetary imaging the stacking applied to the sun works to average out movements, select the best frames and provide very low noise levels. Opposed to deep space imaging, these low noise levels are not used to pull up the dark parts but to apply wavelet sharpening. Sharpening is always prone to increase noise, so it is essential to have as low noise levels as possible as a starting point to pull out the detail from a blurry image.

[Akira]

Thanks Erik and Akira,
Similarly to planetary imaging the stacking applied to the sun works to average out movements, select the best frames and provide very low noise levels. Opposed to deep space imaging, these low noise levels are not used to pull up the dark parts but to apply wavelet sharpening. Sharpening is always prone to increase noise, so it is essential to have as low noise levels as possible as a starting point to pull out the detail from a blurry image.

Interesting.  Thank you for the explanation!

[knb]

Stunning pictures Øivind, and an interesting setup.

[Øivind Tøien]

Thanks Kjetil, it is always fun with new challenges.

[Hugh_3170]

Great work Øivind with these recent solar images.  Thanks also for your setup details - good to see how the images were captured.

[Øivind Tøien]

Thanks Hugh, glad if it can be of use.

[Øivind Tøien]

Another solar capture stack from this weekend, first a two-frame stich in visible light, with Baader Astrosolar ND 5.0 safety film and UV-IR cut filter:
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Detail of active sunspot region AR3297, AR3296 and AR3293 at top and AR3294 bottom, stack of 20% best of 2000 frames captured at 118 frames per second :
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[Edit: Replaced with an even higher resolution version that was stacked with 3x drizzle]


With dark gone here for the summer, next up is a blue moon (not a Blue Moon) that works well in daylight too. There is no direction in space, so we take the freedom of orienting the moon as we like.
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The same captured with a 685nm IR pass filter that makes it easier to convert day to night:
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Also Venus remains visible high in the sky in daytime these days - it is quite bright with good contrast to the background. To locate it over the sky glare it is best to use Stellarium and a pair of binoculars, but with some effort I am able to see it with my unaided eye. First three visible light captures in daytime on two different days at 400-700 frames per second. The middle capture was a stack of the 5% best frames out of 200K frames. The color differences are mostly due to the processing.
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Then an IR capture of Venus, also in daytime, from April 20:
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[Fons Baerken]

Wonderful work Øivind!