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Flashpoint

Smile, wait for flash
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I've been wanting to try my hand at astrophotography but the moon has been very prominent in the night sky recently, and that is bad for taking pictures of anything else in the sky except the moon, so... Last night I went out and took some pics of the moon.

I was on a mission to see what difference there was between my Nikon Coolpix P610, a "prosumer" camera with a 60X zoom lens that has always impressed me with the moon shots it could take. I now also own a Canon M3 mirrorless (DSLR quality camera) which I had mounted on the back of a Celestron C90 spotting scope at prime focus with a T adapter. Most would assume the M3 setup would be superior, and they would be right, but the P610 continues to impress, seeing that it is all in one nice tidy package.

The full moon shots look almost identical:

Nikon P610:
P610-full.jpg


Canon M3 w/C90:
M3-full.jpg



..that is until you get a little closer and then the difference is apparent. Since the P610 was already maxxed out on magnification I had to zoom in on the existing image for comparison. For the M3 I used a 2x Barlow T adapter so it's image is it's original resolution.

P610:
P610-west.jpg


M3:
M3-west.jpg



Here's a vid I made with the M3 setup of the moon scrolling by with the earth's rotation. The jelly effect is from air currents in the atmosphere:

 
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View attachment 131866 View attachment 131867

taken with the lowly quickcam 4000 webcam and stacked in registax through a celestron c8

and yeh - film sucks!!
Awesome! I'd love to have a C8! Yeah I've been looking into stacking but the tools are quite complex, and some say they don't do anything for planetary pics which is obviously not the case. I've seen lots of webcam use with stacking like you did for planetary shots.

Maybe you can answer a question for me. How many types of stacking are there and what kind does registax do?

I know there is focus stacking (1) to increase depth of field which does nothing for astrophotography, then there is HDR which is essentially exposure stacking (2) to increase dynamic range, and I don't know what it's called but I believe there is noise stacking (3) where noise is recognized by pixels from different images of the same subject being different colors, etc. I expect they are eliminated and/or replaced with the most common color of that pixel among the images? Is that what these astrophotography picture stackers do, or something else?

It's funny in that it seems to me that astrophotography is pretty much 100% a technical challenge type of hobby. You're never going to approach the quality and resolution of images that already exist, and beyond weather on Mars or Jupiter those images never change so it's just a technical exercise of how close can you get to what others have already done many times better, kind of like how high can you build a model rocket to go. Much of it depends on your budget but also your drive to learn new things. At least this you can do in your backyard though, or some of us can. :)
 
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Awesome! I'd love to have a C8! Yeah I've been looking into stacking but the tools are quite complex, and some say they don't do anything for planetary pics which is obviously not the case. I've seen lots of webcam use with stacking like you did for planetary shots.

Maybe you can answer a question for me. How many types of stacking are there and what kind does registax do?

I know there is focus stacking (1) to increase depth of field which does nothing for astrophotography, then there is HDR which is essentially exposure stacking (2) to increase dynamic range, and I don't know what it's called but I believe there is noise stacking (3) where noise is recognized by different pixels of the same image being different colors, etc. I expect they are eliminated and/or replaced with the most common color of that pixel among the images? Is that what these astrophotography picture stackers do, or something else?

It's funny in that it seems to me that astrophotography is pretty much 100% a technical challenge type of hobby. You're never going to approach the quality and resolution of images that already exist, and beyond weather on Mars or Jupiter those images never change so it's just a technical exercise of how close can you get to what others have already done many times better, kind of like how high can you build a model rocket to go. Much of it depends on your budget but also your drive to learn new things. At least this you can do in your backyard though, or some of us can. :)


Ill have to chk when i get home. Registax is pretty old but still available i think. I just read an article about two newer ones but cant remember and prob have article at home. Ill look and shoot you pm if i can locate.

With the webcam photos i made i used an avi file and the software separatea them out by frame and determines an avg pic. You can actually get good results with minimal tweaking it was pretty easy to use. I say was because its been prob ten years since i messed with any of that so dont know what changes have been made in more recent versions etc
 
My wife has been making noise about getting a telescope. I’ll be happy to help scratch that itch. Probably Dobsonian, but one of the Schmidt-Cassegrains would be even nicer. We’d have to go somewhere else to use it very well, what with the RTP light pollution.
 
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My wife has been making noise about getting a telescope. I’ll be happy to help scratch that itch. Probably Dobsonian, but one of the Schmidt-Cassegrains would be even nicer. We’d have to go somewhere else to use it very well, what with the RTP light pollution.
If I was looking for a telescope specifically for astronomy, being the bang-for-buck kind of guy I am a Dob would be high on my list! Not so much for astrophotography though, which usually involves time exposures. They do make equatorial mounts for them now but then you're spending as much if not more as other designs.
 
If I was looking for a telescope specifically for astronomy, being the bang-for-buck kind of guy I am a Dob would be high on my list! Not so much for astrophotography though, which usually involves time exposures. They do make equatorial mounts for them now but then you're spending as much if not more as other designs.
I've always wanted a light bucket. When I was a teenager (and lived in a low-light area), I priced out grinding my own mirror for a Newtonian (before Dobs were popular, old fart that I am). We lived on a dusty, dirty farm though, and it would have been tough to pull off grinding a mirror in that environment. I'm not all that into astrophotography, though my wife might get the bug. If so, I would only do equatorial (one motor to worry about). In town, I've made do with a pair of Minolta 10x50s for a number of years.

I did have a cheap POS reflector from Sears as a kid...but it was enough to show me the solar panel (side view, where it crossed more reflective material) on Skylab during its last days. That was exciting.
 
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Star trails are also pretty cool when the moon is out. The extra light on the foreground objects helps.
 
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