From: "Milton Aupperle" <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: February 6, 2009 1:56:18 PM MST

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: First Lunar Image with Grasshopper Mono Camera

Hi Folks;

I took my first lunar images with the GrassHopper Camera on Feb 4th. I

have only been using it for DSO imaging prior to this.

This is a reduced to half size of the original composite:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Astro_IIDC/files/Lunar/Luna_20090204_MJA.jpg

Seeing was poor with fast "boiling" turbulence jumping +/- 10 arc

seconds, erratic thicknesses of clouds and light wind, shooting with

the C8 at 2,000 mm focal length. I used a red (Wratten 23A) filter on

the 1384 x 1036 mono camera in 16 bit mode and recorded about 350 to

400 frames per movie (total of 16 gigabytes of video recorded).

I used 22 to 32 MAP Selection areas for each of the nine movies

resulting Stacked image to test out the new alignment code in Astro

IIDC 4.02.00 beta (not yet available).

I also had to use the "Adjust pixel area brightness if frame

brightness changes." stacking option too, because the passing clouds

changed the brightness enough that pixel matching would fail. You can

use this IF (AND ONLY IF) your tracking is very very good, because if

the moon drifts across the FOV, that changes the overall brightness

and then brightness adjustment is making corrections that are not

cloud dependent.

TTYL..

Milton Aupperle