Society for Popular Astronomy

I was trying to make the most of a reasonably clear night last night to hone my image capture techniques with another bash at Saturn, but ran into difficulties with IC Capture. The live image looked normal, with the planet bobbing about, but when I started recording, every few seconds the image on s...

Hi Sam My experience is limited to one telescope, so I am also not the best person to advise, but when I was researching I have to say that I was put off the motorised tripod styles after reading reviews on some where the drive system had failed. I have a tracking motor on my mount, but it's separat...

Hi Julie I have a pair of Bresser 10 x 50 which I picked up for about £25. They are fine and got a reasonable review in one of the mags considering their price. As for telescopes, that question has been asked a thousand times here. I am not the best person to advise with my limited experience of one...

Hi Dave, I am now using Registax 5. I was having trouble with 4 groaning under the weight of more than 2000 frames.

Am just looking at these on my monitor at work and they do appear darker than at home. I might have to brighten them up a bit.

Rachel

Since it's cloudy, I have found some avi's that I hadn't processed (or had processed but wasn't happy with), but with my growing confidence in Registax, here are the results: Love the outline of Crater Moretus in the shadow in this one (3rd April): http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3595/3419436518_368d...

Bit of an experiment, but I used Arzachel as the alignment point for both sets of images above and managed to combine them into one picture. I was quite pleased with the result.



Rachel

Deciding what sort of objects you want to image is a good idea before splashing out on the equipment as this will determine what sort of equipment you should be buying. There is no 'one size fits all'. Only just started on this imaging thing myself and I found it all equally confusing to begin with,...

Hi Dave, looks like you and I are learning together. We even posted pictures of the same craters!

Rachel

Well, here are my first attempts at lunar imaging. Bit fuzzy but the avi's were pretty rubbish. Only had a window of a few mins between putting the kids to bed and the moon disappearing behind my roof, so the heat from said rooftop didn't help. I think I could have done with more avi's because by th...

Aha, have also discovered how to align multiple avi's in Registax, so have now reprocessed the above to a stack size of 2800. Less grainy, and a hint of Cassini division. I am a bit limited with regards to increasing my focal length since I am already using a 2x Barlow (and I don't own a 3x), but it...

I have found out what a difference the camera settings can make. This time I reduced the exposure, upped the frame rate and fiddled around with practically everything else (gain, gamma, saturation, codec... focus!). And this is the result: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3401/3408263938_f604c74ded.jp...

That is amazing! It's like practically being on the moon when you get zoomed in there. Fantastic detail.

OK, I feel like I am getting somewhere. Have discovered the stretch histogram function, so finally I have a brighter image! And a little Photoshop processing to blot out the ghost and here's the result. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3642/3399153131_2a65b112cc.jpg I think there are just too many dod...

Yes, there's always been that element of the ghost about it, but in the earlier image I think it was masked by it being slightly hazier overall. When I look at the original AVI, I am amazed anything like this has actually come out of it. The image was wobbly, frequently fuzzy, completely out of focu...

Right, I have had another go with Registax - thanks, GeorgeC, for the tips. I hadn't appreciated the significance of the scroll bar (which I had played with before clicking Limit - thought it was just a scroll bar!) and the Lowest Quality button (which was set at 80%). Have now managed to produce th...