The Official Shoot the Moon Thread

Finally a clear night, but dealing with warm, humid air causing lots of atmospheric distortion.

jwcdds wrote in post #19401289
Finally a clear night, but dealing with warm, humid air causing lots of atmospheric distortion.

I do not see ANY distortion! Looks very sharp to me!!

From last night

Quick shot of tonight’s moon…

Out my front door last night

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/2nxx​ZJk

Itsed65 wrote in post #19403342
Out my front door last night

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/2nxx​ZJk
July Moon by lennycarl08, on Flickr

Great shot!!

Heavily cropped, but managed to get my first ever full moon shot!

Inspeqtor wrote in post #19399898

HaroldC3 wrote in post #19399894
Nikon Z7 in DX mode hooked up to a Celestron C90 telescope (1250mm). For a single shot, it's not bad but there's no substitute for taking multiple hundreds/thousands of images and stacking them.

Do you need to use a sky tracker to take hundreds/thousands of images? I would think yes you do. I own an iOptron Sky tracker but sadly I can no longer use it because my eye sight is not as good as it used to be. I can no longer see Polaris or the Little Dipper at all

HaroldC3 wrote in post #19399895
You can reduce your shutter speed quite a bit, thus reducing your iso. Still, you got a nice, sharp image.

Thank you Harold.

I am still hoping for an answer to my question here....

Inspeqtor wrote in post #19399898
Do you need to use a sky tracker to take hundreds/thousands of images? I would think yes you do. I own an iOptron Sky tracker but sadly I can no longer use it because my eye sight is not as good as it used to be. I can no longer see Polaris or the Little Dipper at all

Hi,

It depends on your image scale and exposure time. You do not need a tracker to image the moon, planets or even the sun. It's ok if they drift slowly in the FOV. If your exposure time is fast enough to freeze the seeing and freeze apparent motion, then it's fine. Alignment software will handle it no problem. With a little camera lens and short focal length and course image scale you absolutely can do long videos where the moon just drifts through the FOV.

I would start at 5ms exposure time (1/200 on a traditional camera using fractions). Use the fastest possible FPS your camera has to offer (60 FPS, 120 FPS, none of them will be limited by your exposure time using 5ms or less). Any limits to the FPS will be the camera's data throughput and write speed to the physical media.

Don't worry about using high gain, it's fine.

This is "lucky imaging." Your goal is just to get as many frames as you can. The moon isn't changing in a time frame that matters here, so you can just take a video for as long as you want as long as its in the FOV. You can literally correct it while videoing and move so the moon is in your FOV again and start drifting again if you want. It will still work. More frames is better because your odds of some of them being captured during a moment of good seeing conditions increases with more FPS over more time. You will not keep all these frames, just the best ones (which will be shown on a graph in AS!3 so you can logically know how many frames to align and stack from your particular data pool).

If you have to convert your video format to something traditional alignment software needs to be able to read it, that's fine, Handbrake is free and will do that. Then use Autostakkert!3 to do the rest.

Very best,

MalVeauX wrote in post #19404499
Hi,

It depends on your image scale and exposure time. You do not need a tracker to image the moon, planets or even the sun. It's ok if they drift slowly in the FOV. If your exposure time is fast enough to freeze the seeing and freeze apparent motion, then it's fine. Alignment software will handle it no problem. With a little camera lens and short focal length and course image scale you absolutely can do long videos where the moon just drifts through the FOV.

Thank you for this Martin, I do appreciate it. However much of it is above my skill knowledge. What do you mean by image scale? You also said: "With a little camera lens and short focal length and course image scale" Basically I would want to photograph the moon to get the sharpest image possible so would my 150-600 lens with my 2.0 teleconverter be too large? What do you mean by "course image scale"?

Please try to keep your explanations as simple as possible for me please.

MalVeauX wrote in post #19404499
I would start at 5ms exposure time (1/200 on a traditional camera using fractions). Use the fastest possible FPS your camera has to offer (60 FPS, 120 FPS, none of them will be limited by your exposure time using 5ms or less). Any limits to the FPS will be the camera's data throughput and write speed to the physical media.

What is 5ms?? My 90D does have a very fast FPS but I do not know how that works into this.

MalVeauX wrote in post #19404499
Don't worry about using high gain, it's fine.

What is high gain?

MalVeauX wrote in post #19404499
This is "lucky imaging." Your goal is just to get as many frames as you can. The moon isn't changing in a time frame that matters here, so you can just take a video for as long as you want as long as its in the FOV. You can literally correct it while videoing and move so the moon is in your FOV again and start drifting again if you want. It will still work. More frames is better because your odds of some of them being captured during a moment of good seeing conditions increases with more FPS over more time. You will not keep all these frames, just the best ones (which will be shown on a graph in AS!3 so you can logically know how many frames to align and stack from your particular data pool).

If you have to convert your video format to something traditional alignment software needs to be able to read it, that's fine, Handbrake is free and will do that. Then use Autostakkert!3 to do the rest.

Very best,

You mention "shown in a graph in AS!3"?? Is AS!3 Autostakkert!3??

Handbrake is a free app ??

Inspeqtor wrote in post #19404509
Thank you for this Martin, I do appreciate it. However much of it is above my skill knowledge. What do you mean by image scale? You also said: "With a little camera lens and short focal length and course image scale" Basically I would want to photograph the moon to get the sharpest image possible so would my 150-600 lens with my 2.0 teleconverter be too large? What do you mean by "course image scale"?

Please try to keep your explanations as simple as possible for me please.

What is 5ms?? My 90D does have a very fast FPS but I do not know how that works into this.

What is high gain?

You mention "shown in a graph in AS!3"?? Is AS!3 Autostakkert!3??

Handbrake is a free app ??

Hi,

Image scale is the relationship of the focal length and pixel size. Just know that a smaller instrument with a short focal length and a big pixel sensor will have a course image scale, ie, it will be lower resolution, forgiving on seeing conditions, and not ideal for sampling (recording resolution relative to the airy disc). Your 600mm with a 2x TC on big pixels is fine, it will be limited by the 95mm aperture but ultimately limited by the atmospheric seeing for the real resolution potential. Don't worry about it.

Your 90D has 3.19um pixel size, so it will sample visible spectrum (RGB) critically from F12 to F17, so anything in that range will be a good choice. Anything faster (F8, F5.6, F4, etc) will just undersample on your pixel size (lose resolution). Anything slower than F17 will just waste light. Your 600mm at F6.3 with a 2x TC is F12.6 (F13). I would just leave it at F13 (wide open, don't stop down your focal-ratio). If you stop down your focal-ratio in camera, you're closing the iris and masking your 95mm aperture (the actual size of the opening to your lens). So the ideal use of your 150-600 F6.3 is wide open, do not stop down aperture, with a 2x TC for your pixel size.

5ms (milliseconds). I explained it was 1/200s in traditional camera fraction exposure times right after I wrote it.

Your FPS is in video, don't try to do it in still images. You'll just kill your shutter mechanism faster trying to do hundreds or thousands. You don't take still images. You enable video and record video at the fastest FPS it can record at (30 FPS, 60 FPS, 120 FPS, etc). And adjust exposure time to a short value like 1/200s (5ms) so that you freeze motion and seeing as things move.

Gain is your digital ISO. So just turn up your ISO on a typical d/m-SLR.

If you're not familiar with AS!3, there's tutorials on YouTube and lots of resources, its free and highly used. The quality graph displays after you analyze a video of frames and it will weight each frame based on contrast from best to worst and give you a quality graph based on that so you know how many frames are higher contrast relative to the rest so you can choose a more logical amount of frames to align and stack keeping the high contrast ones and not the poor ones. Basically look at the graph after it analyzes it and select how many frames (% or hard value) that have the highest quality weight, such as above 50% or above 75%, etc. It will be few frames. This is why you need many.

Yes, Handbrake is free. It's a video transcoding software. You may need it if your capture file container from your camera is not a typical RAW container (AVI, SER, etc). I know a lot of cameras use MOV and other stuff that may not be read properly by software like AS!3.

You can manually hand track the moon while recording video no problem. Even with an Alt-az mount. It's super easy with a slow motion control manual mount. A tracking mount of course does this for you. But it's not necessary. You can do it with a traditional tripod too, just let the moon drift in the FOV as long as you can. Take video at high FPS while it drifts in your FOV. Do it a few times going for lucky images when seeing moments are good.

Very best,

MalVeauX wrote in post #19404604
Hi,

Image scale is the relationship of the focal length and pixel size. Just know that a smaller instrument with a short focal length and a big pixel sensor will have a course image scale, ie, it will be lower resolution, forgiving on seeing conditions, and not ideal for sampling (recording resolution relative to the airy disc). Your 600mm with a 2x TC on big pixels is fine, it will be limited by the 95mm aperture but ultimately limited by the atmospheric seeing for the real resolution potential. Don't worry about it.

Your 90D has 3.19um pixel size, so it will sample visible spectrum (RGB) critically from F12 to F17, so anything in that range will be a good choice. Anything faster (F8, F5.6, F4, etc) will just undersample on your pixel size (lose resolution). Anything slower than F17 will just waste light. Your 600mm at F6.3 with a 2x TC is F12.6 (F13). I would just leave it at F13 (wide open, don't stop down your focal-ratio). If you stop down your focal-ratio in camera, you're closing the iris and masking your 95mm aperture (the actual size of the opening to your lens). So the ideal use of your 150-600 F6.3 is wide open, do not stop down aperture, with a 2x TC for your pixel size.

5ms (milliseconds). I explained it was 1/200s in traditional camera fraction exposure times right after I wrote it.

Your FPS is in video, don't try to do it in still images. You'll just kill your shutter mechanism faster trying to do hundreds or thousands. You don't take still images. You enable video and record video at the fastest FPS it can record at (30 FPS, 60 FPS, 120 FPS, etc). And adjust exposure time to a short value like 1/200s (5ms) so that you freeze motion and seeing as things move.

Gain is your digital ISO. So just turn up your ISO on a typical d/m-SLR.

If you're not familiar with AS!3, there's tutorials on YouTube and lots of resources, its free and highly used. The quality graph displays after you analyze a video of frames and it will weight each frame based on contrast from best to worst and give you a quality graph based on that so you know how many frames are higher contrast relative to the rest so you can choose a more logical amount of frames to align and stack keeping the high contrast ones and not the poor ones. Basically look at the graph after it analyzes it and select how many frames (% or hard value) that have the highest quality weight, such as above 50% or above 75%, etc. It will be few frames. This is why you need many.

Yes, Handbrake is free. It's a video transcoding software. You may need it if your capture file container from your camera is not a typical RAW container (AVI, SER, etc). I know a lot of cameras use MOV and other stuff that may not be read properly by software like AS!3.

You can manually hand track the moon while recording video no problem. Even with an Alt-az mount. It's super easy with a slow motion control manual mount. A tracking mount of course does this for you. But it's not necessary. You can do it with a traditional tripod too, just let the moon drift in the FOV as long as you can. Take video at high FPS while it drifts in your FOV. Do it a few times going for lucky images when seeing moments are good.

Very best,

Thank you Martin! I think I am ok with what you wrote down to "You can manually hand track the moon while recording video no problem."

I believe you are saying to "manually move the "tracking" of the moon while in video mode which will make the video jump quite a bit I believe. The mount I use and love is my Manfrotto 410 Geared Head. I had never heard of an Alt-as mount. I googled it which they seem to be made for Telescopes which I do not own.

I really not am into doing video work, but I am willing to give it a try to get a better more sharp single image. is it possible to change the FPS rate of video?

I would think to make a video of the moon at 1200mm without moving the camera I would only get 2-4 minutes before the moon goes outside the live view of my camera. Should I try using my Geared Head to move the tracking of the moon in my live view?

Thank you very much!