AP Moon shot

ZeRoY

Got to try my focus workaround tonight with my Celestron 130EQ (650mm focal lenght, f/5 130mm aperture), a known issue is that focal point is way inside focuser making Prime AP impossible; Got myself a Skywatcher 2X Barlow APO Doublet and indeed I can focus now

Still have to experiment with the barlow focal as the moon was filling my APC-S sensor and more...

Anyway, got outside around 00:10am moon was high in the sky already, setup Scope with very rough alignement and attached the Canon 1100D with Tring + Barlow 2X after getting the moon in the eyepiece (use 10mm)

Took about 30 shots at various exposure and ISO - 1/300 to 1/8 and 400 to 1600 ISO - some more in frame than others, some more in focus than other... at temperature something like 1degree I wasnt going to hang any longer, packed up and processed shots;

Used Fitsworks 4 for the mosaic alignement (very very good software!) and got 4 full frame shots in focus (best from the 30 shots) used Registax 5 to align the 4 shots, then PS for final adjustments.... the result is my best so far....

Hopefully next time I can get the moon fully in frame to skip some of the staking process and get better results!

Tzetze

Looking at this again, I think you've got focus pretty much spot on there Zeroy. I can make out quite a bit of detail along the terminator. Try running it through Registax again and tweak the sliders in the wavelet processing page (that's where the magic happens). Start with the top slider and work your way down. 2nd and 3rd sliders will need hardly any tweaking but a very little will do a lot for the image. You can change the processing preview area - check the 'show processing area' box and click on the image to position the preview area. When you're happy with the processing in the preview area, click on 'Do All'.

Then, in Photoshop you can run it through an unsharp mask (Filters - Sharpen - Unsharp Mask). You can be quite aggressive with the unsharp mask and then give it a 1 or 2 pixel Gaussian Blur (Filters - Blur - Gaussian Blur). A little brightness/contrast adjustment if needed and you should have a very different looking image. =]

ZeRoY

Thanks, will certainly have another shot at stacking as I think the original RAWs have quite a bit of details!

Also, got my Laser Collimator today, that will help getting the scope faster on objects i think!