BBC Focus Magazine

[M Paul Lloyd]

I'm thinking of cobbling together some notes on Lunar photography for the Reference section but meanwhile here's a table that might prove useful, bear in mind that a 1/4 moon is what a lot of people think of as a half Moon and Gibbous three quarter.

[Jamie]

Cheers MPL, you might need to explain how that works with a webcam! Here's an attempt at Juipter:



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It's 300 stacked frames (done with avistack2) and then run through the GIMP to sharpen and bring out a bit of colour (which is a bit subjective).

[Jamie]

I think I might need to get 2 movies and over expose one to get the moons in, then combine the processed images in GIMP to make one piccy.

[M Paul Lloyd]

An excellent bit of work that Jamie, and yes superimose the moons by all means, everyone else does.

I did have a guide to exposure times for the planets........................ somewhere?
I'll try and get back to you on that one.

[Jamie]

I think I might get a Barlow lens to try and make it a bit bigger - that's just the scope with no lens in.

[M Paul Lloyd]

Worth a try but don't forget a Barlow will only make it bigger, and dimmer, but do little to improve the image quality.
Personally I think you have done extremely well as it is.

[Jamie]

That is true if using your eyes, but I think a magnified image on a CCD will give more details - only because it's recording 15 images per second. The Barlow should spread out the photons over a wider area of the chip, and over time we might get a better spread of photons (a 5 minute exposure would be 9000 frames of data). Stack those 9000 frames and you'll get a better, larger image. Perhaps!

[M Paul Lloyd]

Ah yes I'm forgetting about the stacking thing, its not something I had much success with in the past as my old pooter couldn't cope but now I'm wondering if I couldn't stack a series of images from my 10.2 megapixel Pentax K-10D.