I tried a little experiment tonight..

[UlteriorModem]

First let me apologize, no images yet. Too Late I will get to them in the morning and update.

I decided to try some planetary er… Lunar imaging using the ASI071mc. It has a very fast shutter and it worked pretty well. Except lots and lots of dropped frames using shaprcap. Probably greater than 50%. But I did collect some data. Interestingly the field of view I could fit the entire disk of the moon comfortably in one frame.

Because of the incredible crush of dropped frames from the 071 I decided to get out the ole faithful 120mc. Had to change all sorts of fittings and spacers etc but got it plugged in soon enough. Took more than a few minutes to get the moon in frame and then focused.

That accomplished the 120mc was rattling off frames at 18fps. Captured 2 or 3 sets of data. Field of view was at least 30% less than the previous configuration. I 'should' have gone for a mosaic but … next time.

Anyhow tomorrow I will post the results from the two different platforms

[bladekeeper]

Looking forward to the results, Tom!

Yeah, I get a lot of dropped frames with both my 174 and 294 when shooting in color. If I go mono, much better in that regard. I suppose if one were writing to an SSD drive, that may cure a lot of the dropped frame problem. I guess.

[Juno16]

Cool Tom!

Looking forward to you results!

Heck Bryan, doesn’t everyone write to ssd’s now?

[bladekeeper]

Cool Tom!

Looking forward to you results!

Heck Bryan, doesn’t everyone write to ssd’s now?

Not me! I'm still kicking it old school!

[Lady Fraktor]

What is a ssd?

Looking forward to see the results UM

[UlteriorModem]

What is a ssd?

Looking forward to see the results UM

Solid state drive. They have very fast read / write times.

The way the 071 was dropping frames it would take like 10 minutes to grab a thousand or so.

Maybe should have tried binning, not even sure how you shoot in mono. That some setting in SharpCap?

[UlteriorModem]

Hit a little snag! Besides barely remembering all the steps for processing planetary data. Pipp ran fine and spit out an .avi file. Autostakkert acted normally right until the end where it goes to output the stacked images it gives an "Out of memory" error ?

[UlteriorModem]

Here is the first results, this is from the ASI071mc. I found the data extremely hard to work with due to the overall size compared to the 120. It takes a very long time to crunch the numbers and trying to sharpen it does all kinds of funky stuff with the bayer pattern.

This is not a mosaic, full frame with minor cropping from Autostakkert. Only processing I did was the brightness / contrast levels.

ASI071mc-1 by Tom Whit, on Flickr

[Lady Fraktor]

What is a ssd?

Looking forward to see the results UM

Solid state drive. They have very fast read / write times.

The way the 071 was dropping frames it would take like 10 minutes to grab a thousand or so.

Maybe should have tried binning, not even sure how you shoot in mono. That some setting in SharpCap?

You need to work on your humour UM, besides why would you be asking me questions like this.
I do not need binning or SharpCap settings to look through an eyepiece

[Don Quixote]

Nice image here.

Looks like it worked out well, Tom !

[bladekeeper]

Hit a little snag! Besides barely remembering all the steps for processing planetary data. Pipp ran fine and spit out an .avi file. Autostakkert acted normally right until the end where it goes to output the stacked images it gives an "Out of memory" error ?

PIPP can overinflate the data. I usually capture in SharpCap as either AVI or SER, usually SER. I don't touch PIPP. I've never needed to touch PIPP. Straight out of SharpCap, my files go right o Autostakkert. Building an AVI in PIPP can create ginormous files that eat up your memory after you've opened the data in Autostakkert. Try it without the PIPP step and see what you get.

SharpCap does have a setting for mono. Top right under colorspace. You should see something like RAW8, RAW15, Mono RAW8. When shooting color, I go with RAW16. Mono, RAW8.

EDIT: I do like your image, Tom!

[UlteriorModem]

Here is a set of data from the 120mc. I finally kind of remembered how to process images. Thanks for the help Bryan! It was slightly under exposed so hard to balance the highs and lows.

Oh and Gabby? The questions weren't really directed to you, I know you like your visual

Moon 2 by Tom Whit, on Flickr