Lunar imaging

[utopianninja]

If I want to use planetary imaging for the moon and I don't want to use 5x zoom (to be able to fit the full disc in the view) is it possible to get better resolution than 640x480?

Also it's not possible to get rid of that green square when using the 5x zoom, is it? I have Nikon D5100 and Celestron c8. 

[s3igell]

The purpose of the LiveView Planetary Imaging limit of 640x480 (which size is dependent on your Model) is because the overriding goal is to record 1:1 Pixel Resolution Video (one Pixel on the Sensor records to 1 Pixel in the Data).  This is different than the Camera's native FullHD Video, which jams the Full Resolution of the Sensor (12MP to 24MP depending on your Model) down into 1920x1080 FullHD size (meaning 3-7 Sensor Pixels are jammed down into each Recorded Pixel).  This causes significant Loss of Detail.

For Full Resolution, you will need to switch to Still Images.  You can set an Image Plan to snap 100-200 individual Images which you can then Stack in AutoStakkert3 or RegiStax6.

 

[utopianninja]

Yeah, I get that 1:1 pixel resolution😅 for planetary imaging, of course. But for moon shots I have been using cameras own 1920x1080 video recording without computer (is there any possibility to use computer for that? I'm so lazy if I have to go out press camera buttons instead of just sitting in front of computer and push buttons inside😆) and it has given me some good results. I can easily record few minutes video which gives me plenty of frames. Maybe 200 good quality still images beat 5000 less detailed 1920x1080 frames.. I have to try it! 

[admin]

This is not possible with BYE/BYN.  As s3igell said you;ll need to switch to sill images to get the sensor full resolution.

[s3igell]

4 hours ago, utopianninja said:

Yeah, I get that 1:1 pixel resolution😅 for planetary imaging, of course. But for moon shots I have been using cameras own 1920x1080 video recording without computer (is there any possibility to use computer for that? I'm so lazy if I have to go out press camera buttons instead of just sitting in front of computer and push buttons inside😆) and it has given me some good results. I can easily record few minutes video which gives me plenty of frames. Maybe 200 good quality still images beat 5000 less detailed 1920x1080 frames.. I have to try it!  C

Options such as Control of the Camera's actual Video Mode (rather than the LiveView data captured from the Rear LCD Screen) are choices which the SDK usually fails to support.  And since BYE/BYN is wholly dependent on the SDK for accessing the Camera...

[astroman133]

I haven't done a lot of hi-res lunar imaging, but I did create an image that was created using BYE. I hope that BYN has similar capability.

I started out by recognizing that I needed to capture 6 separate videos for the phase that it was in. 3 rows of 2 columns did the trick.

With BYE in planetary mode and 5X zoom enabled, I positioned the LiveView zoom box around the first column of the first row and captured 800 frames. Then I moved to zoom box, in turn, to each of the other 5 imaging positions and captured 800 frames. When done I had covered the entire surface, with good overlap between the positions.

I stacked each video with RegiStax and was now down to 6 images. I used RegiStar to combine those 6 images into a single image. RegiStar is pretty neat and took care of figuring out how the images were related. It organized them, aligned them, warped them to fit together and adjusted the brightness and color of the images to hide the seams and blend them together. RegiStar is not free, or cheap for that matter, but was very easy to use and did a good job.

I thought that the final result came out looking pretty good.

[s3igell]

23 hours ago, utopianninja said:

Yeah, I get that 1:1 pixel resolution😅 for planetary imaging, of course. But for moon shots I have been using cameras own 1920x1080 video recording without computer (is there any possibility to use computer for that? I'm so lazy if I have to go out press camera buttons instead of just sitting in front of computer and push buttons inside😆) and it has given me some good results. I can easily record few minutes video which gives me plenty of frames. Maybe 200 good quality still images beat 5000 less detailed 1920x1080 frames.. I have to try it! 

You should remember that you can also add a good quality 0.63x Focal Reducer to get a Wider FOV.  You can go further with a 0.5x or even 0.33x Focal Reducer - but these are harder to find and have stronger distortion issues.

[utopianninja]

I'm, already using Meade f/6.3 focal reducer 😀.

Thanks for all the answers!