StarTools for lunar imaging

[Epicycle]

Hi,

I've decided to have a go at processing some of my recent lunar images with Startools. Attached are two examples.
I don't have a great camera for lunar imaging: it's a SX Costar which is my autoguider; the problem is there is no good software
for producing avis so what I do is to shoot lots of frames with Nebulosity but the rate is poor, about 5fps. Anyway the pictures below
are stacks of about 600 frames stacked in avistack and processed in ST. I've found the Decon module excellent, perhaps a tiny bit better
than the wavelets in Registax (my traditional way of processing lunar images). As Ivo pointed out in a couple of other posts you set
the image type to planetary, but you should also change the radius. A radius of 5 worked quite well for my images (I did notice that ST hangs up
for large radii, any idea as to why this happens? My way around this was to iterate the module to make the image as sharp as I wanted but not exceeding
5 for the radius at each time).
But I've found that the Contrast module also works great, particularly in the washed out areas, like the one in the picture with the wider field of view:
the upper left corner shows a very "contrasty" (small) Messier A&B.
In summary, for my lunar images I seem to able to do everything with ST and in some cases with noticeable improvements over the usual methods,

cheers
E.

[admin]

Wow, these are fantastic results!
Can you tell me a bit more about your system and OS? These hangs should not happen...
Thanks for posting!

[Epicycle]

Hi Ivo,

it's a MacBook air, for some reason for values of the radius over 5 pixels the Decon module seems to run forever,

E.

[admin]

Hi Ivo,

it's a MacBook air, for some reason for values of the radius over 5 pixels the Decon module seems to run forever,

E.

Darn it. Thought that I had fixed that issue...
Is this with the release version of 1.3?

[Epicycle]

It's the latest I believe (the one with the lasso tool for masks ),

E.

[admin]

It's the latest I believe (the one with the lasso tool for masks ),

E.

Gotcha. Thanks for this - more work to do...

[Gasman]

Hi,

the problem is there is no good software for producing avis
E.

Hi E
Not sure if you have heard of it but I found `Astrovideo` by the guy at COAA to be really good for my last video type camera which was a DMK21 from Image source and I looked around for ages to try and find a decent capture app as I wanted it to produce Fits files from AVI`s for spectroscopy. I could get 60fps and also long exposures with it too. Its pretty good for webcams also.
HTH
Steve

[Epicycle]

Hi Steve,

thanks for the suggestion. I just tried astrovideo in demo mode and it doesn't seem to pick up the Costar, probably an issue with drivers. The software seems
to be directed towards video cameras and webcams. Of course it could be just me being inoperative...

best
Epicycle