StarTools for lunar imaging
Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 10:33 am
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.
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.
),