Moon and Saturn

Mike Lewis

Mike Lewis

Staff Member
Craig Zerbe said:
Taken in Oregon 2001 - a few minutes before Saturn disappeared behind the moon.
View attachment 15609
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Craig,

Your moon images are so crisp they look like they were taken outside of the Earth's atmosphere. You must have some pretty good seeing to start with at your location? Regardless, you are really diminishing any seeing effects masterfully in these moon images. remind me again of what you are shooting with here, camera and OTA-wise? Great timing too to get Saturn peeking out from the edge of the moon like that.

A phenomenal image in every way.

ML
 
Craig Zerbe

Craig Zerbe

Well-Known Member
Mike Lewis said:
Craig,

Your moon images are so crisp they look like they were taken outside of the Earth's atmosphere. You must have some pretty good seeing to start with at your location? Regardless, you are really diminishing any seeing effects masterfully in these moon images. remind me again of what you are shooting with here, camera and OTA-wise? Great timing too to get Saturn peeking out from the edge of the moon like that.

A phenomenal image in every way.

ML
Click to expand...
This is the camera I used https://astromart.com/auctions/astromart-auctions/ccd-cameras-astro/show/astrovid-2000-ccd-imaging-system-free-shipping-mint-1446 Mike, I am sure they have something much better now. It is just B&W, which I am sure helps. Here is a video from a few years ago on YouTube that will give you an idea the the "seeing" I was getting. The "full" moon images were mosaics I would put together. I would scan over the moon, taking a few seconds of video of each area and then use the telescope remote to move to the next area. The video camera had a 1.25" nose, so it plugged in just like an eyepiece would. I am sure it would be a lot easier today with direct digital storage and an HD or even 4K chip instead of 640 x 480. My Celestron 11" diameter Celestron SCT telescope of course, gathers a huge amount of light, so I am sure that kept the gain (ISO) down. My tripod was over 50lb and very sturdy. Before Registax software I would stack 10-16 images, as even that was manual and time consuming. That reduced video noise some but not nearly as well as stacking 200 images, which I used for the really high rez stuff. This "full" moon is probably 10-16 images stacked for each section with about 20 individual puzzle pieces. It does not take great seeing to get a full moon mosaic. On omy really high rez stuff, I would get maybe 3-4 nights a year that were truly special and pushed the limits of land based resolution. I have plenty of other images, from the old days I may occasionally post, but look at the YouTube video.
 
Mike Lewis

Mike Lewis

Staff Member
Craig Zerbe said:
This is the camera I used https://astromart.com/auctions/astromart-auctions/ccd-cameras-astro/show/astrovid-2000-ccd-imaging-system-free-shipping-mint-1446 Mike, I am sure they have something much better now. It is just B&W, which I am sure helps. Here is a video from a few years ago on YouTube that will give you an idea the the "seeing" I was getting. The "full" moon images were mosaics I would put together. I would scan over the moon, taking a few seconds of video of each area and then use the telescope remote to move to the next area. The video camera had a 1.25" nose, so it plugged in just like an eyepiece would. I am sure it would be a lot easier today with direct digital storage and an HD or even 4K chip instead of 640 x 480. My Celestron 11" diameter Celestron SCT telescope of course, gathers a huge amount of light, so I am sure that kept the gain (ISO) down. My tripod was over 50lb and very sturdy. Before Registax software I would stack 10-16 images, as even that was manual and time consuming. That reduced video noise some but not nearly as well as stacking 200 images, which I used for the really high rez stuff. This "full" moon is probably 10-16 images stacked for each section with about 20 individual puzzle pieces. It does not take great seeing to get a full moon mosaic. On omy really high rez stuff, I would get maybe 3-4 nights a year that were truly special and pushed the limits of land based resolution. I have plenty of other images, from the old days I may occasionally post, but look at the YouTube video.
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Craig,

Thanks for the detailed reply and especially the links. I only watched the frst part of your video, I will be watching the rest later tonight, but compared to what we typically get here, that looks like pretty spectacular seeing. I have not really done hardly any planetary or lunar/solar stuff as of yet, being mostly a deep sky astro guy. But I do know about the techniques and software used. I have set up at my house and looked at Saturn and Jupiter before, really awful seeing that time.

My deep sky camera is the ZWO ASI1600 cooled mono camera, which actually can do some respectable frame rates when subframing the sensor, supposedly achieving ~80 fps at 640 x 480 with 12 bit depth on a USB 3.0 connection. I have gotten it up to 60 fps anyway. So at those rates, it is not too hard to get at least some frames that combat the seeing issues. I regularly go down to either New Mexico or Arizona to image, and the seeing down there is much better than along the front range here in Colorado. So on my next trip I plan to try to get some planetary and/or lunar stuff that is a little better, although for deep sky we almost always travel the week of the new moon, so lunar is not always practical. My biggest OTA atm is the Celestron EdgeHD 800, an 8" SCT, so not quite the magnification or light gathering of your 11 inch. But probably not too bad.

Anyway, I continue to be impressed by the clarity of your mosaics - just some fabulous moon details visible in these, and very few of the typical post processing artifacts that are often introduced when using these techniques either.

ML
 
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