A 40-frame webcam mosaic of the full moon! Dec. 25 - 2004

Setup: 8" SCT f/10, SBIG green filter, ToUcam webcam, 0.58 "/pixel

Webcam settings: 1/500 sec, 5 FPS, brightness=100%, gamma=10%, b&w mode=ON, 640x480 pixels, 'color optimized non-raw' (CONR) mode, 60 sec. sequence on each FOV

Processing: K3CCDtools, Photoshop7

I'm happy Earth's natural satellite isn't any bigger! The image above has been reduced by a factor 3 from its orginal size and consists of 40 individual frames. Focussing was done by hand with the manual SCT knob using the lunar landscape as a gauge. I acquired a 60 sec sequence for each FOV, the sharpest 3-4 images were then selected and stacked in K3CCDtools. Flatfielding wasn't done. Each image was manually aligned and adjusted in brightness/contrast to match the others. A mild unsharp mask was applied to the final image.

The seeing was pretty poor, with clouds and haze passing overhead. At one time I had to wait 45 minutes for a cloud system to pass. In spite of these troubles the resolution on the final image isn't too bad, around ~1.5 arcsec.


Here's my main page where you can see more of the pictures I have taken so far.


Comments greatly appreciated! (mikael@leif.org)