The Official Shoot the Moon Thread

Someday Martin.... I will want to buy a telescope and Astro camera and at that time I will be rereading your most informative posts! It is quite exciting to see what you produced that day with pretty inexpensive gear!

In the meantime I will continue to enjoy seeing what I can get with my regular camera gear. And I have found my smaller pixelled 24mp A77ii crop frame camera produces better moon shots than my FF 42mp A99ii.

Yes, when i got into astronomy i bought astro cameras, one for DSO and another one for planetary although i can use that for DSO on planets, but the cameras for planetary has smaller pixel sizes as i see from many solar system images, and it is a color one, i may add another one but mono and use filters for planets more than the moon but sure i can try on the moon too.

Now all what i need is better scopes, for now i am using ST80, an achro scope that is used for guiding mostly, but with mono i can easily shoot the moon and have nice details or results for sure, but i really don't think or focus on the moon at all these days, it is always shown and clear every month so i will always have time for the moon easily, while another targets are not always around in the sky, later i will complete my setup then i can give the moon more practice.

Can anyone steer me to post processing techniques for moon and star shots? Earlier in the thread I asked for and received some advice on programs to use, but I'm finding them less than intuitive. I was on vacation a couple weeks ago and made sure to shoot the moon a number of ways. Stacking these images is proving to be challenging.......

It's like a whole new universe out there.

J-Blake wrote in post #18536189
Can anyone steer me to post processing techniques for moon and star shots? Earlier in the thread I asked for and received some advice on programs to use, but I'm finding them less than intuitive. I was on vacation a couple weeks ago and made sure to shoot the moon a number of ways. Stacking these images is proving to be challenging.......

It's like a whole new universe out there.

Both are very, very different in terms of how to process. By star shots, I assume you mean wide field deep space produced with still images? And by moon shots, are you referring to a still image, or high resolution lunar surface video? It changes everything depending on what you're doing and what the source material is.

Very best,

And also sometimes what equipment you use, quality can vary sometimes, many could say equipment doesn't matter, if it doesn't matter then all equipment should be in same price, pointless if a tool of $20000 can't do better or give anything better than $200 same type of tool, a mount that is $1000 is good enough, but a mount that is $10000 has to prove it is worthy, same with camera or telescope, even software has some kind of differences or performance, only users can make things worthy it or not, if someone can't make something expensive or high quality working then it is not gear problem, and also someone who master $1 item doesn't mean it is always the best or working for all.

My point above it, a user with high skill but not high end equipment can produce nice images, but to limits, this is an equipment limits or fault, while a not skilled user with high end equipment and can't produce nice results then it is user limits or fault not the equipment, i sometimes read posts showing that it is always the equipment fault and it is sometimes a waste to have expensive equipment when it is not the case.

I tried using my DSLR not modified on tracking mount for astro, i couldn't have anything good, i may need long long time for, but then i bought a cooled astro mono camera, and suddenly I've got something first time or right away i never expected not even with DSLR, i can't say i am skilled, i can't say that equipment does matter, but sometimes things must be put to the right place either a user or equipment.

MalVeauX wrote in post #18536312
Both are very, very different in terms of how to process. By star shots, I assume you mean wide field deep space produced with still images? And by moon shots, are you referring to a still image, or high resolution lunar surface video? It changes everything depending on what you're doing and what the source material is.

Very best,

Thanks Martin. That's a good question as I didn't know there was a difference. I'm not a video shooter, so I'm currently taking stills alone. I do have the ability to shoot a video, though never done it. I believe that's a relatively easy learning curve so could incorporate video if it's going to produce improved results, though I assume shooting video at night presents additional challenges. To date the star shots I've taken I would classify as night landscapes as opposed to astro-photography. Mostly wide angle (14mm to 50mm) to let in light and increase exposure time. I do have an iOptron Sky Tracker which I've used a handful of times, but so far only to improve my wide angle exposure time. I recently took a number of moon shots with a 70-200mm lens with a 2X doubler (as much reach as I currently have), on a FF camera body.

J-Blake wrote in post #18536485
Thanks Martin. That's a good question as I didn't know there was a difference. I'm not a video shooter, so I'm currently taking stills alone. I do have the ability to shoot a video, though never done it. I believe that's a relatively easy learning curve so could incorporate video if it's going to produce improved results, though I assume shooting video at night presents additional challenges. To date the star shots I've taken I would classify as night landscapes as opposed to astro-photography. Mostly wide angle (14mm to 50mm) to let in light and increase exposure time. I do have an iOptron Sky Tracker which I've used a handful of times, but so far only to improve my wide angle exposure time. I recently took a number of moon shots with a 70-200mm lens with a 2X doubler (as much reach as I currently have), on a FF camera body.

For full disc shots, I wouldn't even bother with taking several images (stills) and stacking them. Not at this scale (small resolution due to the small aperture instrument used). A full disc created as a mosaic from several high resolution panels would be different. But for a single shot of the moon, just start with a single exposure (like 99% of what's posted here). Stacking only cleans up random noise, but that's it. To benefit the signal to noise ratio (which only serves a single purpose on the lunar surface, to lift shadows basically), you'd have to stack lots of frames (S:R ratio increases based on the square root of the number of stacked images, with diminishing returns represented as a curve). The moon as a disc is not something that requires a lot of signal to noise ratio to do anything with, so focus on a good exposure to begin with (preserving highlights as your first priority). You normalize the exposure from there with levels by stretching the histogram to be more flat. Initial sharpening is done with large pixel ratio high pass filters. Then small pixel ratio high pass filter. Another option is to apply subtle deconvolution (this replaces sharpening to an extent). Then contrast to taste. I would not stress any noise reduction, you lose crater detail there, it's ok to have some grain, it's worse to lose detail.

I wouldn't put a lot into this at 400mm on a full frame sensor, it's low resolution, so you're not resolving much anyways, so it's better to focus on getting a good exposure and display it with a good composition more than anything.

Very best,

My first attempt from last weeks super moon.

Hazy night tonight but trying out Fuji's XF100-400 so pointing up anyway.

The Moon at 15:55 over my house with the Fuji XF100-400 and probably the last moon shot for a while as the lens goes back Saturday.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/23GZ​33q

Well I took two more today @ about 16:30 with the Fuji XF100-400mm testing out the Image Stabilization. Both shot at 400mm and 200% crop in on 24Mpx camera.

This one @1/15 a little bit of softness but was at f/16

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/JQiW​gM

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/23Mn​bq8

We finally got a clear night (winter time here is VERY cloudy) so I took some pictures of the moon.

I used my 1.4TC on this photo.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/22N3​6oN

Nice and clear, looks like you are ready for the eclipse later this week.

It's been windy today but has calmed down a bit this evening. I wanted to get my camera and lens setup for the upcoming eclipse so I took this test shot. At least the air was clear.

Capn Jack wrote in post #18551315
Nice and clear, looks like you are ready for the eclipse later this week.

Thank you Jack,

Only if we continue to have clear skies... this is our forecast.....