From: Alan Friedman <alan@greatarrow.com>
Date: November 3, 2008 2:09:28 PM MST
To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] sunday's sun
I'd love to see your drawings as they are completed.
I've thought of doing the same thing by setting a movie from my DMK camera to play in endless loop and draw from the screen. Should be similar to drawing from the eyepiece, but with a little more comfort.
cheers,
Alan
On Nov 3, 2008, at 3:03 PM, Ray Byrne wrote:
Hi Alan,
I'll take time and mentally digest your post here. I know that you have been chatting with my very good friend Mick Hyde (he lives just a mile away and we were colleagues at the Royal Mail Engineering establishment in the 90's) and you guys seem to be wowing the astro world with your Lunar images. I can't seem to get that hi-res "I'm flying in a space ship over the moon" look from my images maybe it's local seeing or not enough effort in getting out there often.
What I have been doing is looking at taking single grabs (best ones) and using them as a basis for a drawing. I don't know if you are familiar with the work of Peter Grego but his Lunar drawings are really good and it transpires that he uses digital sketches as a basis for his drawings. I thought I'd have a look at this kind of thing and although it's very time consuming I'm quite pleased with how my first effort is going - plus I'm getting a more intimate feeling for the particular area of the Lunar topography I'm focussing on.
Watch this space for AstroIIDC based illustrations of Lunar features
On 3 Nov 2008, at 19:16, Alan Friedman wrote:
Hi Ray,
Good to hear from you - thanks!
When you can work the automated processing routines in AstroIIDC into your work flow, the time spent on preparing an image is cut dramatically. This is a great help with solar imaging especially. To think metaphorically, solar imaging is like journalism - lunar imaging more like literature. A day old solar image is like yesterday's newspaper. There is already a new one on the front steps! Speed and efficiency is paramount to getting an image out to enjoy while it is still newsworthy. I spent about two hours on this image - most of the time adding in the MAP optimized regions (Astro IIDC can do this for you, but I am still doing it the old fashioned way at this time) and trying to remember how to colorize the final version.
For lunar images, I still spend a ridiculous amount of time using my eyes on the image. I think there will always be some degree of compromise with machine processing, but with the tweaks and new functions Milton has been adding to Astro IIDC, my Mac is able to do a lot more of the work automatically.
cheers,
Alan
On Nov 3, 2008, at 1:47 PM, Ray Byrne wrote:
Hi Alan,
What a "lush" image! I could see that you were imaging from a suburban situation (as most of us do) so all the more for that. I'm keen on creating hi-res Solar stuff and I find what you do an inspiration, although I not sure if I have the dedication required to get near what you do. Thanks for sharing your settings info it's on file :o]
All the Best
Ray Byrne
On 3 Nov 2008, at 15:03, Alan Friedman wrote:
Hi all,
Here is an image I made yesterday of the sun in Ha:
http://www.avertedimagination.com/img_pages/sun_110208.html
The data was captured in Astro IIDC 4.0 and processed in 4.01 Alpha 8.
I used 36 multiple alignment points to improve the sharpness around
the disk of the sun (seeing was highly turbulent as the sun, now at 32
degrees altitude, passes just a bit above the rooftops with their
winter heating season distortion). I used the batch processing feature
to prepare the 36 MAP images. Final assembly of the pieces into a
single image was done manually in Photoshop.
This is a tough project for software to handle due to the high degree
of morphing from frame to frame in daytime seeing. I was surprised to
get such a good result with automated processing.
Settings: Lunar/Solar for alignment, manual selection, gaussian blur
applied for sharpness and alignment, center quadrant was used for
sharpness evaluation, CI cutoff was 70% - final selection was 90
frames. Pixel matching tolerance was set to medium low. Frames stacked
for each MAP image was in the range of 64-85, with 85 frames
successfully stacked in all but 4 of the images.
best wishes,
Alan
ATB
Ray Byrne
in4media | graphic and website DESIGN
T: 01793 435704
ATB
Ray Byrne
in4media | graphic and website DESIGN
T: 01793 435704