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

[Øivind Tøien]

I had another go at Jupiter during a clear night November 16. It is also is in a good position close to earth now, although only maxing out at 23° altitude at my location. I found a time that offered som interesting interaction with the moons and the Great Red Spot. As for the Mars images, Jupiter is bright enough to be captured with the 300mm f.4 PF+TC-14E+TC-20E III @ f/13 on Nikon 1 AW1 and adapter at ISO 160, bursts of 60 fps -1/60 sec exposures. Each Jupiter stack was typically 400-500 frames over about 3 min. Some gaps from battery and card change were interpolated using WinJupos. Due to the low resolution it was not possible to detect the moons at this exposure - they had to be exposed separately with series of 30-60 frames at 1/4 sec exposure between the Jupiter exposures, and stacked and composited with the Jupiter stacks. This resulted in moons getting a bit on the bright side compared to what is realistic.

The moons from left to right are Io, Ganymede, Europa with Callisto to the far right. In this frame Ganymede is in front of Jupiter, and is hard to see, but there is a darker area that manifests on Jupiter's surface about 1/4 in from the right edge. The shade from Ganymede on the surface would be right inside the edge.
#1



#2
The Great Red Spot is just showing up on the left edge, and Ganymede has just stepped out and revealed itself more clearly.



The Great Red Spot in a more prominent position.
#3



And then the full 19 frame animation lasting about 100 minutes. The Ganymede shade is prominent in the first few frames on the right, and then the Great Red Spot rotates in from the left. It took quite a few trips through PIPP and GIMP to get things lined up.
#4



A  line up of all the Jupiter stacks including Ganymede in some of them. (Open in new tab and click for full detail.)
#5

[Nasos Kosmas]

Excellent Oivid
My own tries still very poor

[Øivind Tøien]

Thanks Nasos, and do not give up. The processing with centering in PIPP, stacking in Autostackert and careful wavelet sharpening in Registax is essential for these results to appear, besides the tedious manual compositing and adjustment of rotation angle for the animation.  Attached is an original crop from PIPP of one of the very best frames and worst frames for one of the capture periods. For Jupiter I stacked the 30% best frames (about 150 frames each) while for the moons I used the best 50% (about 20 each) to cheat shorter periods of bad atmospheric conditions. I initially tested multiple percentages to find the best balance between noise and blurriness.

[Akira]

That is a great improvement, Øivind!  Congrats!

[Øivind Tøien]

Thanks Akira, while some of it is improvement in the processing (particularly in Registax), more stable atmospheric conditions were probably also contributing compared to the last capture that I presented.

[pluton]

Late in the day, after moonrise.  180mm on APS-C.

[Øivind Tøien]

Nice repetition of shape in the building structure, Keith.

Last full moon, or actually the day before, I tried to getter a better capture of this moon phase. Seeing seemed pretty good, with minimal wobbling of the image, but low transparency caused original captures to look slightly blurry. Same equipment as my planet captures, stacked the best 30% of about 500 frames. This time I used the new wavelet sharpening tool called waveSharp that is a rewrite of parts from Registax by the original author. Final processing and cropping in CNX2. Open in new tab and click for full resolution.

#1



While at it I could not resist the temptation to recomposite it with the Mars image to recreate the simulated conjunction with a better quality moon image.
#2

[Øivind Tøien]

This time the real Mars-Moon conjunction on January 30, captured through a lighter portion of the cloud cover, so I barely got it, and handheld in a hurry so no time to change camera settings much or mount TCs.  It seems there was a moment of lucky seeing during the capture. Mars is what looks like a dust spec on your monitor in the upper potion of the frame. 

[ColinM]

Good reactions Ovind.

Was Mars only half illumimated this time,  or is it just much much smaller in reality than your simulated conjunction image #2 earlier above?

[golunvolo]

Nice repetition of shape in the building structure, Keith.

Last full moon, or actually the day before, I tried to getter a better capture of this moon phase. Seeing seemed pretty good, with minimal wobbling of the image, but low transparency caused original captures to look slightly blurry. Same equipment as my planet captures, stacked the best 30% of about 500 frames. This time I used the new wavelet sharpening tool called waveSharp that is a rewrite of parts from Registax by the original author. Final processing and cropping in CNX2. Open in new tab and click for full resolution.
While at it I could not resist the temptation to recomposite it with the Mars image to recreate the simulated conjunction with a better quality moon image.
#2

 I did open it and it is amazing the detail in there. Thanks for sharing it!

[Øivind Tøien]

Thanks for the comments Colin and Paco. I seem to have been very lucky with seeing on the full moon capture, but if one are into this kind of stacking it is well worth checking into the waveSharp tool (for sharpening post-stacking), https://github.com/CorBer/waveSharp/releases

Good reactions Ovind.

Was Mars only half illumimated this time,  or is it just much much smaller in reality than your simulated conjunction image #2 earlier above?

Colin, the simulation is correct for what apparent size Mars had in December (I used the same lens/TC/sensor and 3x drizzle during processing), with the reservation that the proximity to the ful moon and thereby the size off the moon might have differed between the Mars capture and the time of the moon capture January 5. But I believe I tried to compensate for that during editing. However since closest approach/opposition in early December, we have been quickly moving away from Mars - it is already appears much smaller, so your observation is correct.

[Øivind Tøien]

The sigmoid moon greets Jupiter today - again, I hardly got it though the cloud cover, 300mm f/4 PF @ f/4.5, 1/4s handheld with full VR on. 

[John Geerts]

Nice repetition of shape in the building structure, Keith.

Last full moon, or actually the day before, I tried to getter a better capture of this moon phase. Seeing seemed pretty good, with minimal wobbling of the image, but low transparency caused original captures to look slightly blurry. Same equipment as my planet captures, stacked the best 30% of about 500 frames. This time I used the new wavelet sharpening tool called waveSharp that is a rewrite of parts from Registax by the original author. Final processing and cropping in CNX2. Open in new tab and click for full resolution.

#1 and #2

Exceptional shots, Øivind.  Great details.

[Øivind Tøien]

Thanks for the enthusiastic comment, John.

Btw, while the Jupiter moons were not bright enough to be resolved though the cloud cover in the capture above (there should have been 4 visible), it resolved the bands on Jupiter - not bad for a handheld exposure at 1/4sec! (crop at 150% scale):

[John Geerts]

There was a clear moon, this afternoon around 5.

D850 AF-I 300/2.8  (crop)