Tuesday 14 May 2019

AstroDMx Capture for MacOS, bad seeing and large frame-counts

When the seeing is bad the atmosphere bubbles and the image distorts, coming in and out of focus. However, if you look carefully, there are brief moments of clarity. If a very large number of frames are captured and all but a small percentage of the best quality frames are discarded, it is possible that when the remaining frames are stacked, a worthwhile image will be obtained.
A QHY 5L-ll-M camera fitted with a x2.5 Barlow, was placed at the Cassegrain focus of a Skymax 127 Maksutov, which was mounted on a Celestron AVX EQ, GOTO mount.
AstroDMx Capture for MacOS was used to capture a 20,000 frame SER file of Crater Clavius (70.7% waxing Moon), with a region of interest of 800 x 600; and the following night, a 30,000 frame SER file of Clavius (80.7% waxing Moon) was captured.
The best 5% of frames of the 20,000 frame SER file were stacked in Autostakkert!3 running in Wine, wavelet processed in Registax 5.1 also running in Wine and post processed in the Gimp 2.10. The best 4% of the 30,000 frame SER file were similarly processed.

Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture for MacOS capturing the 20,000 frame SER file of Clavius




Crater Clavius, stack of the best 1000 of 20,000 frames



The following night. Stack of the best 1200 frames of 30,000 frames


Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture for MacOS capturing the 30,000 frame SER file of Clavius


       6 pane mosaic of the terminator of the 89% waxing Moon
Best 10% of 10,000 frame SER files