A motorfocus modified Skywatcher Skymax 127 f/11.8 Maksutov was mounted on a Celestron AVX mount and a ZWO ASI178MC camera was placed at the focus.
AstroDMx Capture for Linux running on a Linux Mint laptop was used to capture 1200-frame SER files of different regions of the 77.7% waxing Moon.
Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture for Linux capturing a Lunar SER file
AstroDMx Capture has customisable reticles that can be placed on the preview screen at arbitrary positions to help with manual tracking should the Moon tend to slowly drift in the fields of view. This minimises the useless edge regions that occur if drifting takes place.
Screenshot showing the reticle placed over a feature for manual tracking
The best 85% of frames in each of the SER files were stacked in Autostakkert! and wavelet processed in Registax 5.1, both running in Wine. The final images were post processed in the Gimp 2.10.
Results
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Tycho region
The ZWO ASI178MC camera is a good match for the Skymax 127 Maksutov and AstroDMxCapture makes the capturing of SER files a simple matter. It is also possible, if preferred, to capture AVI files but the more modern and simpler SER file is to be preferred. One reason is that, if required, 16 bit SER files can be captured, which is not possible with AVIs. The customisable reticle is a very useful feature as it can be used to delimit the edges of the preview image in addition to facilitating manual guiding of lunar, solar and planetary imaging sessions.
AstroDMx Capture can be downloaded HERE.
AstroDMx Capture is available for Windows, macOS, Linux including Raspberry Pi OS and ChromeOS.
