Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Jack16 on August 29, 2007, 11:43:16 AM
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I just got a camera (Meade DSI) for my telescope and took some pics of the moon. They came out a little fuzzy. Is there a certain tool on a photo editing program that I could use to make it more clear.
(http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x311/archywood/Moon2.jpg)(http://[IMG]http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x311/archywood/Moon5.jpg)[/IMG]
Note: I already used contrast and brightness.
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This is a tiny bit better.
(http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x311/archywood/Moon5_1.jpg)
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You may need to experiment with the telescope's focus... what may be focused to your eye may not be focused to the camera's CCD.
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Thats how much good focus i could get out of it. It was hard to tell because every time I would touch the focuser the camera screen on my laptop would shake from the vibrations.
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There are so many things that can cause a fuzzy image through a telescope. Could be focus, poor eyepiece, too powerful an eyepiece, bad viewing conditions due to light pollution, wind on a cheap tripod, bad tracking, heavy atmosphere.... the list goes on.
Without knowing your setup, I can only make a guess but I would say the poor image quality is either too low a resolution or more likely too long an exposure. The moon moves fairly rapidly though your telescopes' view and the longer your exposure, the more detail you will lose.
Here is a picture I took with a prime focus setup though my Meade ETX-90EC, ISO set at 100 and shutter speed 1/50th of a second. Even that's a bit long and I could have gotten more detail had I bumped up the ISO and sped up the shutter speed. In the close up you can already see loss of detail.
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f93/hawk_fw/Night%20Pics/Moon_Small.jpg)
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f93/hawk_fw/Night%20Pics/Moon_Smaller.jpg)
There are some good tips on astrophotography here (http://www.weasner.com/etx/astrophotography/toc.html)
And if you have a Meade telescope you probably won't find a better resource on the net than Weasner's Mighty ETX Site (http://www.weasner.com/etx/menu.html)
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Thanks for the info ChickenHawk:aok. My scope is from the Meade DS-2000 Series and like I said before, I just got the camera, so i'm still trying to learn how to use it (like zooming in and out and what all the settings and crap are for:rolleyes: ). Here's my latest picture:
(http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x311/archywood/Drizzle6.jpg)
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That’s really not bad for a first try. My first shots were worse than that.
Astrophotography is about the hardest photography you can try. Much harder than terrestrial photography in my opinion.
It looks like you are suffering from bad focus, shaky mount, bad stacking or all three.
You last image looks like you suffered “clipping”. Meaning the sensors got over saturated in certain spots. Those areas are “blown” and pure white and no amount of processing will recover that information. If you software has a peak meter or histrogram, make sure the peak values stays lower than about 90% of masx.
Did your DSI software have a focus meter? You might give a “Hartmann Mask” a try (google it).
Were those single frames or did you stack sub frames? If stacking did you use Registax (freeware)? The wavelets filters in Registax will sharpen about as good or better than anything out there for planetary images.
Here are two moon images I took recently with my 12” Meade LX200:
Crater Scheiner (http://jasonirby.net/LPOD/Scheiner_Blancanus.jpg)
Crater Moretus (http://jasonirby.net/bitbucket/moretus.jpg)
While your first trys may not be perfect, I bet they still gave you a little bit of a thrill to capture something at all. Its addictive. ;o) And you’ll continue to get better with every shot. Looking forward to seeing your next ones.
Regards,
Wab
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Thanks for the info Wab. Those pics are awesome:O! On the account that I just got this camera I still need to learn what most of the settings and stuff are for. I'm not really familiar with this type of stuff. And as for the image stacking, i think the software automatically does it for me.
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way cool
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Highly detailed photographs of the Moon taken by the Apollo missions are being made available to the public for the first time in more than 30 years.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6966655.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6966655.stm)
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I actually like google's map of the moon.. you can zoom in far enough to see the lunar lander. Puts all those skeptics to rest for sure.
http://moon.google.com/
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I have a Meade 6" refractor scope with the autostarII system.
Never could get the bloody autostar to work. Good thing the moon is easy to find ;).
Been waiting to have some spare cash to buy a CCD setup for it but ever since I got my hands on a super lightweight digital camera ive been thinking of hooking it up to the scope. need time to tinker that one ;).
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Originally posted by Tac
Never could get the bloody autostar to work.
The auto star is a pain to get working. First, you have to find North and have to put the scope in home position facing North. Then you have to enter the date, time, and whether or not you have daylight savings. Then you have to choose your aligning method (not sure about you, but I have easy, one star, or two star). Then pick the star you want to be part of the alignment (except for easy, which picks the stars for you) and hit enter. When the scope starts slewing to the star, it won't be exactly lined with it. You have to complete the alignment yourself. hit enter again. If you picked the two star alignment, it'll prompt you to pick another star. Then you get a message saying if alignment is successful or not.
If you want your scope to track an object, go to setup, targets, then astronomical.
:aok
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Here's my latest pick:cool:
(http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x311/archywood/Moon3copy.jpg)
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I took this pic with an Orion 5" reflector and my 4megapixle digital camera. I did it by holding the camera up to the eyepiece. Of course is this NOT the best method, but it does work. The downside is the number of pictures needed to get a couple of good ones is large, but since it's a digital camera you just delete the bads.
(http://pastorcmr.home.comcast.net/pics/moon.JPG)
Best regards,
--Tachus
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Originally posted by Jack16
The auto star is a pain to get working. First, you have to find North and have to put the scope in home position facing North. Then you have to enter the date, time, and whether or not you have daylight savings. Then you have to choose your aligning method (not sure about you, but I have easy, one star, or two star). Then pick the star you want to be part of the alignment (except for easy, which picks the stars for you) and hit enter. When the scope starts slewing to the star, it won't be exactly lined with it. You have to complete the alignment yourself. hit enter again. If you picked the two star alignment, it'll prompt you to pick another star. Then you get a message saying if alignment is successful or not.
If you want your scope to track an object, go to setup, targets, then astronomical.
:aok
Yup, the first step is my problem believe it or not!
Since im in central/south Florida, the north star is usually within 15 degrees from the horizon for me. And where I live the horizon is either covered with tall trees or with light pollution from the city so its quite hard to spot. Been trying the 2 degrees off the magnetic north but never could get the thing to find the 2 stars. My method has been: try alignment, 2 star method (or 3 or whatever), then I tell it to point to the moon and track it.
the scope ends up pointing somewhere but the moon hehe.
Nice scope though, its a blast to see the outer planets in such clarity. Once I get the autostar to work (aka when I finally move up north) i'll be snapping some nebulae pics.
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Stumbled across this and thought it might be of interest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1auTp6qJcM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1auTp6qJcM)
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Already showing a lot of improvement.
Regards,
Wab
Originally posted by Jack16
Here's my latest pick:cool:
(http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x311/archywood/Moon3copy.jpg)