The Moon, with its colours enhanced...

[DrJon]

Since bringing out the very faint colours of the Moon, that you really can't see, seems to be a thing I had a go. I was playing about with a Frankenstein collection of hardware and a Frankenstein collection of software and came up with this (downsized to 2048x2048 pixels as it's quite big otherwise). What do people think?

Canon 5Dsr
92mm Telescope (on a Photographic Tripod)
f6.66 (without the Barlow, which will make it quite a bit darker)
ISO 1600
1/320th
20 Images Stacked

Scope-Barlow-Diagonal-Extension Tube-2" to T2 adaptor-T2 to EOS adaptor-Camera
(It's a 2x Barlow, but in this configuration it will be maybe 3.5x, hence ISO 1600 as all the light got spread out.)

Cropped in PIPP-Stacked in Autostakkert3-Wavelet sharpening in Registax6-Saturation increase in Photoshop-Downsized in Irfanview

5DR27316_ISO1600_Stack-first_AS_P100_lapl4_ap22743_conv_RegistaxWavelets_ 0-4_0-29_3_ps_flipped_sm4fbsh by John Michael Leslie, on Flickr

[DrJon]

BTW here's an actual pixels crop (well, if you are seeing it at 2048x2048 anyway) of a part where I think the colours work well...
You could sharpen this to bring out quite a bit more detail, but I kinda like the smooth look...
(All I did to get the colours is to increase the saturation, although I wrote a long Cookbook article on how to do this which explains the steps involved.)
So, what do people think?
5DR27316_ISO1600_Stack-first_AS_P100_lapl4_ap22743_conv_RegistaxWavelets_ 0-4_0-29_3_ps_crop4fb by John Michael Leslie, on Flickr

[Lepus]

These are amazing , I will be back to study these further .

[Trev B]

Fascinating John, although I know nowt about this type of photography -- never thought that the moon has other colours than what we see.

[DrJon]

A few people seem to like doing this, and I think it does look good if you get it right, but in reality the colours are very faint, being due to the different types of geology, and you can't see them. Now an alien race with super-sensitive colour vision might be all over this...
The colours are the real colours, not false colour, just enhanced a fair bit...
Oh and this was shot last night, so I ended up being up to 1.30am and had to get up in the morning for Pet minding duties... You can easily recognise me in a crowd... I'm the one yawning...

[DrJon]

I can post how I did this if people are interested, but it's very long, as I did a step-by-step guide...

[colin C]

That is probably the best moon shot I have ever seen and I would very much welcome a step by step.

[Colin W]

I think both photos are great, well done.

[DrJon]

Okay, but when you struggle through this remember people asked...

This is just pretty much what I do when making a stacked Moon image, I'm not claiming to have any great insights, but I've tried to come up with a fairly simple (really!) and easy-to-follow guide on how you could try stacking if you're starting out. There are a squillion different ways to do it and if you've already got decent results some way or other this may not be of much use. That said here's a blow-by-blow workflow to make a stacked moon image...

Sorry but this is quite long, but doesn't take that long to do (the manual parts that is, with a slow computer some processing steps may take a little while). Also I take no responsibility for any unsteadiness caused by following the Coffee/Wine drinking steps extensively...

Oh and to start note that while the Full Moon looks amazing, but when the Moon isn't full the light coming in from an angle shows off the 3D nature of the Moon so much better (shadows being so important in Photography).

Notes:
* This only uses free software (except one optional extra step I've described doing in Photoshop).
* I use Windows, if you are on Mac I'm sorry but I can't help so much.
* Shoot a number of well-exposed images using a tripod, as none of the stacking software currently available handles image rotation all that well.
* Shoot in Raw (or Raw+JPEG if you prefer). Shoot at least 10 images, although more than 40 is better and more than a few hundred probably getting into diminishing returns.
* I would suggest a shutter speed of 1/60th or more (1/100th at focal lengths over 600mm) to avoid Moon movement issues (greater still if the Tripod isn't that stable). Try to keep the ISO down.

Okay, so here is my getting-started-with-stacking Guide:

I would suggest using PIPP followed by Autostakkert3 (both free). Start from Raw Images. I will do a run and write as I go, so this is going to take me a long time to write and you much less to read :-)

Workflow...

Install PIPP (ideally the 64-bit one) from:

https://sites.google.com/site/astropipp/downloads

Download and unzip Autostakkert3 (ditto on 64-bit) to somewhere handy from here:

http://www.astrokraai.nl/software/latest.php

Start PIPP
Use "Add Image files" (bottom left) to add the Raw files
Choose raw images taken together on a tripod (to avoid image rotation, which stacking software doesn't handle that well)
Expect a message about join mode when you exit the dialogue.
Move the "Output Frame" Window that has appeared out of your way.
Select the optimise options for Planetary box (bottom right).
In the "Input Options" tab it will be okay leaving the Debayer Algorithm as Bilinear (on the left below the "Debayer" checkbox, which should already be checked) but I'd go with AHD.
In the "Processing Options" tab find "Centre Object in Frame" in mid-right and in the drop-down below it select the Moon's phase in the images. (If you don't see this did you forget to tick the "Planetary" option above?)
On the same Tab "Enable Cropping" should be ticked.
Pick X and Y sizes that cover the Moon plus as much as you'd like to see around it. Untick if it's very large in the image already... I just cropped what I wanted out of one of the JPEGs, saw teh resulting size and rounded up. Leave the offsets at 0. The maximum size seems to be 5000x5000.
Note at this point you can click "Test Options" in the top right to check it crops okay (then close the pop-up Window after checking).
In the "Quality Options" tab I like to enable this but set a number to keep all the frames (the default should do this).
In "the Output Options" tab choose TIF and tick "Include quality value in filename".
In the "Do Processing" tab click "Start Processing." Coffee or Wine is good at this point. I'm going with the latter...
You should now have a sub-directory in your original image directory and further a sub-directory of that containing a bunch of TIFF files with names like...
00_5DR27739_quality_100%.tif
01_5DR27742_quality_96.89%.tif
etc.
(Where 5DR27739, 5DR27742 are some of the original images.)
Check they have the Moon centred and are cropped okay, else go back and try again.

When happy close PIPP and open AutoStakkert3 (ideally the 64-bit version, if your system supports it). This doesn't install, so just run it from its location.
Click "1) Open", change "Files of Type" drop-down to "Image Files".
Find and select all the TIFFs you just made (so click first and shift-Click last, or Ctrl-A with one selected, unless some have low quality settings then ignore those) and click "Open". Another Window should appear, with a Moon image, move it out of the way for now.
Click "2) Analyse".
In the shiny new Window that recently appeared choose an AP size (e.g. 48) and click "Place AP Grid" on the left. If it looks like it covers the Moon well with reasonable sized boxes (it's to do image fine alignment, they are already very close from PIPP) then return to the main window, else try again.
Note - if the Moon gets cropped on one edge (and wasn't in the source images) try expanding the size in the viewer window (top left).
Click "3) Stack" on bottom right...
(Wine/Coffee time again ;-) )
Now you should have two TIFF files in the directory above the TIF files PIPP made. Either pick the "*_conv.tif" one or the other one and try sharpening it.
Close AS3.
You can stop here or look at notes 1 and 2 below...


Extra notes:

(1) You can enhance the output image using Registax Wavelets. Here's a quick example:
* Download and install Registax from http://www.astronomie.be/registax/download.html
(Currently install 6.1.0.0 first, then install 6.1.0.8 afterwards.)
* Run up Registax
* Click select and open the stacked image (Say Okay to the stretch intensity levels question)
* Click on the Wavelet tab
* Type something like 0.25 into the "Sharpen" box on Layer 1 on the left side.
* Slide the slider below it somewhat to the right. Note it will be previewed in a square box in the image display, click in there to move it around (you may want to select/deselect "Show Full Image" while doing this. Optionally play with the denoise box too. Choose sharpening/denoising levels you like.
* Click "Do All" (wait for it to get to 100%, it just leaves the progress bar full when done) then "Save Image", both at top left. Save as a 16-bit TIFF.

(2) If you want to bring out the colour (not visible to the human eye without processing work) you can do it in Photoshop:
* Load the final TIFF into Photoshop
* Click menu entry Image->Auto Color
* Optionally duplicate the image layer (just to have an unsmoothed one for comparison, can be ignored, just hit Ctrl-J.)
* Add a Hue/Saturation layer above the image layer(s)
* Double click the magnifying glass option to show the image at the pixel level and scroll to where one of the Seas is visible (may not be required for smaller images on higher-res displays).
* Crank the saturation up until all the sea areas look very noisy (but not so far the colours get extreme).
* Click to select the image layer (the copy if you have two)
* Do menu Filter -> Noise -> Reduce Noise
* Check Preview is ticked in the dialogue
* Mine started in the Basic mode with settings 6-60-45-25 and "Remove JPEG artifact" unticked. You might want something in-the-ballpark.
* Slide the Strength slider until the noise in the seas becomes acceptable. Optionally play with the other settings. Don't go too far and check the detail is still good. Click OK.
* Go back to the adjustment layer and tweak the Saturation
* If the Moon now has too much false colour at the edges you might want to make a Black brush and paint around just the edge of the Moon on the Saturation layer's Mask. Possibly also elsewhere on the face with a reduced opacity (50% say) to tone down anything that looks too much.

(3) You can't use the Drizzle option in AS3 as that needs frames that haven't been aligned by PIPP.

[Bill53]

Amazing shots John.

Bill.

[ST-EOS]

Excellent images Jon, they are both amazing

[Alan_H]

Absolutely stunning, read the how to do, going for some wine now

Alan

[DrJon]

Absolutely stunning, read the how to do, going for some wine now

Alan

Seems a bit of a shortcut to getting an image... but one I can completely get behind...

[tesarver]

Excellent image John

Tom

[@imagesBV]

Beyond amazing!!