I’ve got a few small scopes and a few choices of camera. Celestron 80x400. Celestron 70x700. 1959 Lafayette 60x800 and a tasco 60x900. My camera are a Nikon d3100 , svbony sv305 , and a iPhone 8 Plus camera.. and the best shots I’ve ever taken were using that 1950s Lafayette and my iPhone.. for deep sky astrophotography the little 80x400 and my Nikon are fantastic with a proper mount.
Thank you so much for this tutorial. I made a capture like you did and it's awesome! (except just a bit blurry), for a newbie like me this is gold. Thank you so much, you made me take a giant leap in learning.
Yes absolutely. I did not use an equatorial mount - just the stock alt-azimuth that came with my Celestron 4SE. Just make sure you do a decent 1 or 2 star alignment and you should be good.
Thank for watching! These are Windows based programs. I guess if you run Parallels or Bootcamp, you may be able to run them on your Mac. I'm a Mac person myself but I ended up getting a dedicated PC laptop for my astrophotography because of the planetary software.
Hi Don, wow, awesome tutorial, I observe Luna with my Skywatcher 180 MAK Pro & Celestron 8se. Already getting great detail but never used this option. Just purchased a ZWO ASI183MC camera so looking forward to using this to create something awesome. Fingers crossed 🤞🤞🤞 thx again 👍👍👍
Great video Don! Quick question, why did you shoot vidos/avi's? Why not shoot raw images (still images)? Also, would a full frame DSLR work? I've been trying to capture hyper detailed pictures of the moon too and am frequently disappointed. You can see some of my shots here: instagram.com/rmichaeldavis/ I've never used Sharp Cap and Autostakkert (I currently use Deep Sky Stacker) but will check them both out. Thanks again...great video!
That’s a great question. Typically for planetaryt and lunar I like to shoot video to capture as many frames as possible. My planetary camera is a high frame rate device that captures image frames in RAW. Autostakkert is used to process the video, keeping only the sharpest/stable frames. This is almost necessary for planetary. The lunar, there’s defiinitely flexibility in how you acquire the image because it’s so big and bright. However, if your seeing conditions aren’t great or there’s too much atmosphere, shooting video for lunar is a safe bet. I highly recommend processing your planetary and lunar images in Autostakkert and sharpening in Registax. They are designed for it and it’s completely changed my planetary/lunar game. The programs are free and well worth it. Thanks for checking out my video. Clear skies!
Hi Don, that procedure is awesome! My question is about the Mosaic ... Do you capture the mosaic shots automatically with software or do you have to move and shoot manually? I've got a good tracking mount but wondering if the Celestron has a built in mode for doing the mosaics?
Hi! Sorry for the late reply. I capture the mosaic shots manually. Not sure if Celestron has a built in mode or not. If you use the ASI AIR or NINA, I believe those have a mosaic function. Thanks for watching and clear skies!
Great job, Don! However, craters seem to be ringed by luminous artefacts. Likely a bit over processed in the wavelet step? Anyway, you gave me the motivation to do it on my own! Clear skies, JB
Hi, just found your channel. Great video. Just wondering if you were planning on doing a video later this month for the great conjunction? That would be great to see. Thanks 😊
@@theinterstellarfeller Thanks for the reply. Definitely will stay tuned. Looking to get a small beginner astro rig at some point when I can. So far limited to a point and shoot and tripod. Could be worse though. Lol
