Full Moon

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Star Dad United States of America
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Full Moon

#1

Post by Star Dad »


To AP or not to AP when at or near the Full Moon? It seems where I live in CT we only get 4 clear nights a month and inevitably one of the good nights is at or close to a full moon. My skies are Bortle 5 so I take 60 second exposures. Does anyone do AP (except of course on the Moon) at this time? Is there any special processing you do that helps eliminate the light pollution from the Moon?
"To be good is not enough when you dream of being great"

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Re: Full Moon

#2

Post by Juno16 »


Good question SD!

Looking forward to comments.

Thanks,
Jim
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Re: Full Moon

#3

Post by bladekeeper »


I do but I am also a glutton for punishment. In my mind it is a good time for practice. I do tend to stick with something stellar (open or globular clusters) so that I do not need to kick up the exposure overly long.

My sky is usually around a Bortle 5 also and I use an OSC CMOS. I am set up right now on a very warm evening and the TEC cooler on the cam running with the hamster wheel on full tilt. :lol:

I also dither between each frame. And I probably won’t be able to stretch the image quite as much as I otherwise would. We’ll see what things look like tomorrow if I can get any reasonable data.
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Re: Full Moon

#4

Post by Bigzmey »


I know people shoot nebulae with filters on Moon nights.
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Re: Full Moon

#5

Post by jmfloater »


I have shot narrowband Ha,OIII and SII at full moon with some success but the OIII seems to suffer the most with gradients. Imaging as far away from the moon as possible is recommended but if transparency is just average your data will still suffer. Keeping exposure lengths to a minimum does help IMO.
John

Imaging scope Stellavue SV80S on a Losmandy G11 mount. Roll off roof observatory.
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Re: Full Moon

#6

Post by Star Dad »


Interesting and thanks! Had not really thought about narrowband. I'll have to give that a try next opportunity. I hate to lose a good night - full moon seems to equal clear skies.
"To be good is not enough when you dream of being great"

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Re: Full Moon

#7

Post by JayTee »


bladekeeper wrote: Mon Aug 12, 2019 2:21 am I do but I am also a glutton for punishment. In my mind it is a good time for practice.
I'm the opposite of Bryan. I sit in a chair and sulk while cursing at the Moon, that "Evil Orb".

The sky is too bright,
JT
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Star Dad United States of America
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Re: Full Moon

#8

Post by Star Dad »


Cruel orb that rules the night
red is gray and yellow white
but we decide which right....
Moody Blues....
"To be good is not enough when you dream of being great"

Orion 203mm/f4.9/1000mm, converted TASCO 114mm/f9/1000mm to steam punk, Meade 114mm/f9/1000, Coronado PST, Orion EQ-G, Ioptron Mini-Tower and iEQ30, Canon 70D, ASI120MM,ASI294MC, Ioptron SkyHunter
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Re: Full Moon

#9

Post by STEVE333 »


Over the past week I was able to get out twice to image the Elephant's Trunk Nebula. The average moon phase was 85%. Not full, but, pretty close. Below is a link to the image I was able to produce.

viewtopic.php?f=66&t=2370

I image with a DSLR and an STC Duo-Narrowband filter which only passes a 10 nm passband at Ha and another 10 nm passband at Oiii. I'm able to get 9 min exposures even with the nearly full moon. The moon still makes the images worse because of the added noise that comes with the brighter sky. However, the image looks pretty good to me.

So, to answer your question, Yes you can image with a full moon, but, your images will be noisier because of the added noise that comes with the added brightness of a full-moon-sky. Narrow band filters will definitely help. Whether it is worthwhile will always be something only you can answer.

Pretty deep stuff huh?

Have fun,

Steve
Steve King: Light Pollution (Bortle 5)
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Re: Full Moon

#10

Post by ram »


To a degree it depends on the target but generally NB is the only solution I've found that works, and shooting away from the moon (which thankfully is possible due to the way my set up is positioned - the moon is mostly behind my home and rarely shines on the scope. It produces gradients sometimes which can be removed.

With my OSC, while doing M45, I realised that even a slight amount of light from the moon was making the data more crappy. This is a unique target but also I think a good test of how additional skylight interferes with imaging faint reflection nebulae. You can actually see the difference in versions A and C in my M45 image: https://www.astrobin.com/421142/ - A contains about 22 minutes of moonlight frames (done to round up the total exposure to 4 hours). Version C is all frames done in pure darkness and it was easier to process and you can clearly make out the filaments in this target better here than in the A version (and the version that had two more hours of 1.3 e/pixel sky brightness data was even worse, if you can believe that!).

When my sky brightness was 1.3 e/pixel (moon was setting), compared to say 1.2 or 1.1 (as measured by Sharpcap) the images produced were useless in the final stack.

So I've learnt my lesson on this - no more OSC unless my sky brightnesss is about 1 e/pixel (no more than 1.2 for sure, since that's what I got when the moon went down entirely).

--Ram
Tubes: Celestron 9.25" 235mm f/10 XLT EdgeHD SCT; Meade ETX 80mm f/5 achromat; Coronado SolarMax II 60mm f/6.6 Hα <0.7Å BF10 solar; Stellarvue 70mm f/6 triplet apochromat; Obsession UC18 457mm f/4.2 with Argo Navis & ServoCAT; Takahashi FS128 5" f/8.1 and FC100DF 4" f/7.4 fluorite doublet apochromats. Mounts: AVX; LXD75; Paramount MyT. Eyepieces: 2" Tele Vue Ethos 4.7/13/21mm, Paracorr, 2,4x Powermate; Stellarvue 0.8x, Takahashi 0.7x, 0.66x reducer/corrector. Cameras: ZWO ASI120MC-S; Lodestar X2c; X2m; Canon T7i; QHY163M; QHY247C; QHY294M-Pro. Filters: 1.25" Astrodon 5nm Ha, 3nm O3 and S2; Chroma LRGB.
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Re: Full Moon

#11

Post by Baurice »


Well, yes, I rather like the full moon with its ray systems and will do a quick DSLR shoot or get my Bresser Electronic Eyepiece out and get some close-ups. Recently, the Perseid Meteor shower peaked jut before a full moon. Apart from the brightest Perseid I ever photographed, my constellation shots weren't too bad.

https://sungazer127mak.blogspot.com/201 ... -2019.html
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