Lunar mosaic with version 0.68.1 AstroDMx Capture for Linux, an SVBONY SV305 camera and a Skymax 127 Maksutov.

The SV305, fitted with an SVBONY UV/IR cut filter was placed at the Cassegrain focus of the Maksutov, which was mounted on a Celestron AVX, EQ GOTO mount. A 5m, active USB extension cable was used so that the camera could be controlled from indoors. AstroDMx Capture for Linux was used to capture 11 overlapping, 1500-frame SER files of the terminator region of the 67% waxing Moon, using the 8-bit mono function of the camera that Nicola has implemented in AstroDMx Capture.

Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture for Linux running on a Fedora Linux laptop, collecting a 1500-frame SER file of one of the panes of the mosaic.

The best 70% of the frames in the SER files were stacked in Autostackert!3. The resulting images were wavelet processed in Registax 5.1, stitched in Microsoft ICE and post processed in ACDSee and the Gimp.

11 pane lunar mosaic

Larger view

Detailed full-size sections

The SV305 is a very good, low cost camera, capable of solar system and deep sky imaging, by an up and coming company.

A future experiment will involve the use of a mount hand-controller extension lead to allow the control of the mount as well as the camera from indoors.