Creating a Mosaic Of The Moon
Front Cover Image Full Moon created by the author from a mosaic of 87 individual avi frames stacked in Registax and stitched in Microsoft ICE. Final processing in Adobe Photoshop Main Software needed for this How To SharpCap2, obtained here Registax, obtained here Microsoft ICE, obtained here Image processing, try GIMP, its free
Howto created in association AstroScience Online Astronomy Society Academy UK Astronomy
Creating Lunar Mosaics
Background Quite often when we choose to take a picture of the Moon, we are able to do so. It is easily framed, so all there is to worry about is the exposure and the brightness. We don’t want the image over or under exposed. However, quite often the case with a webcam, we can only get a tiny portion of the Moon into it. The insert here shows the below image seen from a webcam represents a tiny fraction of the entire Lunar Image
However what happens when we are only able to view a fraction of the Moon as seen here. This is a typical webcam view. Well if we want to get the entire Moon with the webcam its going to take a little work. The best method of doing so is going to be to image the Moon in sections, gradually moving across the surface but allowing for overlap.
Each tile represents another capture taken with the webcam. Only the terminator of the Moon has been captured here but you would need to capture the entire lunar surface
This is the theory, but how do i do it, seems very tricky?
To create mosaics of the Moon you will need a) A telescope referable with a control drives or worm gears b) A webcam modified for Astrophotography c) A computer c) Capture software, we used SharpCap d) Stacking software like Registax. More detailed instructions will be provided within the OASA Course, but once you have the Moon in the view of your camera streamed on the computer you can then start taking captures
Follow the process now of taking at least 1000 frames (less if your telescope is manual and not drive, “no motor�). As discussed in the diagram seen earlier keep capturing avi frames until the whole Moon has been captured There will be a lot of frames! We never completed the process here, but that was 21! What you need to do is ensure there is adequate overlap in between images.
Registax Once the videos are created, it is necesary to stack each avi until we are left with a single frame, if you are not sure how to do this there are loads of tutorials on youtube or view OASA online courses.
So with Registax started, navigate to the relevant file (ip: for mosaics i tend to stack in order starting from top then going down)
With alignment points set, we can now proceed and click align, to align all the frames. In this case 1002 of them
Progress bar appeara to show its in action (this can take a little time!)*
Once completed, the final image is saved. Do not make changes to wavelets, just save the final image
Once image is created, save asis, then move onto the next image. Follow same process
Creating the Mosaic Startup Microsoft ICE
The mosaic is created, as you can see below this is incomplete but you can do better! Save as jpg and process in Photoshop or just uplload to the web!
Was this tutorial of interest to you? But could be clearer? We have a whole video end to end tutorial on how to capture, stack, and stitch the images together. For a mere £15 you can have access to this and a whole host of other useful courses we’ve put together. We’ll even make the lunar files available for you to play with!