11th JUne 2016 More imaging.

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It was a warm Saturday and late afternoon when I decided to try my luck at imaging again. I set up the 7" and 90mm refractors on the MkIV and MkIII mountings respectively. The Moon was at about 40 degrees altitude to the south but almost lost in the bright blue sky with high cloud. The Sun was sinking, boiling furiously  and blindingly bright but displayed several spots or features.  A large, dark spot near the limb looked worth trying to capture with the Neximage5 camera. 

Both mountings are being difficult with serious problems with both motor drives. I had to keep adjusting the slow motions on the MkIII to bring the spot central in the camera's narrow field of view. Despite the wild thermal gyrations the large spot looked pleasingly sharp on my computer monitor. The Solar image shows a hurried tour through Registax and PhotoFiltre with slight cropping. This was recorded with the 90mm f/11Vixen M90. I would have been delighted to have captured such a view with my usual afocal snaps but am left slightly disappointed with my results via stacking. The software needs considerably more practice to optimize the results. Unfortunately and I am really not getting remotely enough practice to become familiar with it.

The very light nights at this time of year at 55N make nighttime astronomy almost completely pointless. Only at 2am is the sky quite dark.  Even at 11pm, the sky is still quite blue as Mars and Jupiter struggle for attention.

This Moon image is quite unbelievable considering the very low contrast against the sky and thermal agitation. The Registax Wavelet process dredged this image out of the ridiculously soft mush right at the bottom of the barrel.

I have not tried using PIPP but did apply PhotoFiltre to gently increase the contrast and crop the edges slightly after Registax. I was careful not to overdo it to avoid that "over-sharpened" look. I keep wondering how good the images would be with dark skies, some really good seeing and a rock steady mounting with a steady drive. Presumably the scale could be considerably increased, centered on a single crater, with much smaller lunar detail easily visible and everything nicely sharp. I am certainly not kidding myself that I have dented the potential of the Neximage5 camera even with my present optics and mounting problems. Nor have I managed to rid myself of the "TV lines" superimposed on the images.

Click on any image for an enlargement. 

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