The Sharpest Moon I've Achieved So Far

A few weeks ago I experimented with getting really clear shots of the moon, and the results were better than I expected. I’ve waited for a few weeks for the moon to come back around into the night sky and last night I finally had a good chance. The clouds parted as the sky got dark, and I was given a clear view to a 51% illuminated moon high in the sky.

I collimated, focused, and aligned my finder scope in preparation. Using my ZWO ASI290MC camera I settled on 10ms shutter speed and 100 gain setting for a good exposure level. Mainly I wanted as many frames as possible without blowing out the image.

The image of the moon ended up being 9 individual images stitched together. Each image was roughly 1000 individual frames, of which I stacked the best 75% in autostakkert. I did my best to hold the telescope as steady as possible, and threw away shots that had bad pointing.

Each of the 9 stacked images was sharpened with wavelet filters in Registax. I made sure to process each image with exactly the same wavelet settings so there weren’t inconsistencies across the image. I finished off the image with some level adjustments in darktable. The photo stitch was done in Windows Live Photo Gallery.

After collecting all the images I needed for my whole moon shot I figured I might as well get a few individual shots too. All were processed similarly to the photo stitch images, but I added a 2x barlow lens to the setup.

First was the Apollo 11 landing site, always a favorite. I couldn’t quite make out Aldrin, Armstrong, Collins craters, but it’s very clear!

The last two images weren’t any targets in particular, just spots I thought looked interesting and pretty.