SW for stacking Moon crescent images?

just Tony · Jul 20, 2023

Sequator wasn’t very enthusiastic about my set of 66 images. It used only 4, on all the rest it gave me the “Failed” response on alignment attempts. These were handheld at 400mm so there would be some variation in tilt as well as X and Y. No stars were recorded and I had “best pixels” selected.

Is there a different program that tends to have better success with planetary-type image content?

--
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Jeffry7 · Jul 20, 2023

just Tony said:
Sequator wasn’t very enthusiastic about my set of 66 images. It used only 4, on all the rest it gave me the “Failed” response on alignment attempts. These were handheld at 400mm so there would be some variation in tilt as well as X and Y. No stars were recorded and I had “best pixels” selected.

Is there a different program that tends to have better success with planetary-type image content?

DavidWright2010 · Jul 20, 2023

just Tony said:
Sequator wasn’t very enthusiastic about my set of 66 images. It used only 4, on all the rest it gave me the “Failed” response on alignment attempts. These were handheld at 400mm so there would be some variation in tilt as well as X and Y. No stars were recorded and I had “best pixels” selected.

Is there a different program that tends to have better success with planetary-type image content?

just Tony · Jul 22, 2023

DavidWright2010 said:
just Tony said:

Sequator wasn’t very enthusiastic about my set of 66 images. It used only 4, on all the rest it gave me the “Failed” response on alignment attempts. These were handheld at 400mm so there would be some variation in tilt as well as X and Y. No stars were recorded and I had “best pixels” selected.

Is there a different program that tends to have better success with planetary-type image content?

Click to expand...

I doubt that any stacker will handle 400 mm handheld shots.

why don’t you use a tripod and shoot off a burst or a short video?

Of course you are right about the tripod, but both of mind were committed at the time to a setup that must not be disturbed for an ongoing project, and the ultrathin lunar crescent was very low and getting lower. Sometimes you just have to respond. My 100-400 Z lens gave such a satisfying result on what was only envisioned as going to be one frame, then one thing led to another. The incremental cost was no barrier.

just Tony · Jul 22, 2023

Jeffry7 said:
just Tony said:

Sequator wasn’t very enthusiastic about my set of 66 images. It used only 4, on all the rest it gave me the “Failed” response on alignment attempts. These were handheld at 400mm so there would be some variation in tilt as well as X and Y. No stars were recorded and I had “best pixels” selected.

Is there a different program that tends to have better success with planetary-type image content?

Click to expand...

AutoStakkert is the main for planetary.

There is also Planetary System Stacker.

Registax is another stacker that is no longer in development, but a lot of people love its wavelet sharpener.

If you have rotation in the images they might all fail. It depends on how much.

Thanks for the suggestions, I’ll look into them.

W5JCK · Jul 22, 2023

I understand the “spur of the moment” decision to attempt the shot. After all, nothing ventured, nothing gained, as Ben Franklin wrote. With a bright Moon, handheld shots of the Moon are definitely possible, maybe not for stacking though. With a thin crescent though the shutter will have to be considerably slower to allow enough light in. So as another said, if you have an available tripod, enough time to set up everything, and not much wind blowing, then use a tripod.

With a crescent Moon you might try shooting 4K video at 24p and 100M with a 1/25th (or faster) sec shutter for 30 seconds to get a huge number of frames. Just 10 sec of video will yield 250 frames.

Another cool thing to do with a crescent Moon is to shoot a set of 5 bracketed images. This varies the shutter speeds thereby allowing you to stack the 5 images into an HDR (high dynamic range) composite. If all goes well, you will get a detailed crescent lit by sunlight and a dim Moon body lit by earthlight (sunlight hitting the Earth and illuminating part of the Moon indirectly). It make for some really cool effects! You can easily align and stack only 5 images in Photoshop or most other photo processing apps.

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tradesmith45 · Jul 25, 2023

This freeware is designed for staking planets & the moon. You can find tutorials on YT. While it will stack individual images, the best results come from video (mp4). It grades all the frames for sharpness so you can select the best. A couple min of video will give a few thousand frames.

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SW for stacking Moon crescent images?

just Tony

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