June Moon (first stack)

[Stargrrl]

So this is my first attempt at stacking - I used Registax and stacked about 10 shots of the moon taken a couple nights ago...each shot at 1/25 shutter, ISO 100, DSLR with a manual focus-only, 500 mm, fixed f/8 lens - Rebekah

Moonstack-20140609-2.jpg (50.24 KiB) Viewed 2415 times

[AndyG]

Nice first stacked image!

How do you like stacking in Registax? Do you feel that the stack had less noise than the individual subs? Did you try the wavelet tool?

[Stargrrl]

Hi Andy, shooting RAW at ISO 100 I had not much noise to start with, and did some minor cleanup to all the photos in Lightroom prior to exporting (tone curve, contrast, sharpening), but the final product did seem less noisy. I tried the wavelet too for sharpening but don't think I noticed a difference. The one problem I had was getting my 20 mp RAW files down to a JPEG size that didn't cause Registax to lock up, it also could not handle the entire stack I actually took without freezing. Any tips or other software ideas, let me know! Rebekah

[Apollo XX]

Hi Rebekah,

I see you didn't mention tracking, and I was just wondering if you took your shots on a still tripod and how you were able to frame the images close enough to allow stacking?

Mike

[Stargrrl]

Yes they were shot on a still tripod. Didn't need tracking, as I just aligned all the shots in Registax first (it set the alignment points) before stacking them. But then, the moon is a pretty big object (and not too fuzzy with a 500 mm lens) so that likely makes alignment a fairly easy process?

If you don't have the software Mike, it's free here: http://www.astronomie.be/registax/ and read the instruction pages, such as http://www.astronomie.be/registax/previ ... lerun.html

Rebekah

[Bruce D]

Nice Rebekah! I really like the high contrast, makes the lowlands stand out very well.

[AndyG]

Hi Andy, shooting RAW at ISO 100 I had not much noise to start with, and did some minor cleanup to all the photos in Lightroom prior to exporting (tone curve, contrast, sharpening), but the final product did seem less noisy. I tried the wavelet too for sharpening but don't think I noticed a difference. The one problem I had was getting my 20 mp RAW files down to a JPEG size that didn't cause Registax to lock up, it also could not handle the entire stack I actually took without freezing. Any tips or other software ideas, let me know! Rebekah

I do not know too much about Lunar/planetary stacking. I did try a little bit with Registax, but I found AutoStakkert! (beta version 2.3.0.21) to be easier to use for stacking, though I did like the wavelets sharpening in Registax. The AutoStakkert! site has a link to a guide for Lunar imaging with DSLR if you are interested.

[Stargrrl]

Thanks Andy! That page on lunar stacking from videos is really interesting, which means at some point I need to figure out how to hook up my Canon DSLR to my refractor

Rebekah