Full Moon in colors with the ASI224MC – Mosaic Moon

Full moon in colors, 07/08/2017

Click here (or on the image) to show it in Full Resolution (2500 x 2500 )

Since i started into astrophotography, i always used a DSLR camera to shot the full moon. That was for many reason :

• The Moon enters entirely into sensor, so no need to do mosaic.
• Very easy to shot the moon and no need to use even my computer.

But since i received my new camera ASI224MC, the idea to use it for a full moon never quit my mind. But there is a difference compared to shooting using the DSLR : The full moon didn’t doesn’t enter entirely into the sensor.

Even i don’t use a Barlow lens, the ASI224MC with its small sensor and small pixel size (3.75µm) mounted on a Skywatcher 150/750 will only record a small part of the Moon.

So the solution is to take separately the different parts of the Full Moon then stitch them in a sperate software.

In my case i had to take 6 different panels (in video format) using the excellent software Firecapture.

Then each video was processed in Autostakkert . I kept 1500 frames on the total 5000 frames captured at about 150 fps!

The next step was to stitch the different parts together. And for this i used the software Kolor Autopano. It did this step automatically and easily.

After that the full image was processed in Registax 6 to reveal details thanks to its powerful algorithm for Wavelets.

Finally, in Adobe Lightroom, i enhanced sturation and vibrance to show the different chemical composition of the Moon specially in the Mare areas (variations of iron and titanium). .