Shooting the Moon, my attempt at astrophotography

[Aloicious]

here's my latest moon shot, I like how it came out much better than some of my earlier ones.

the moon is 69% full taken from my back yard.

this is a stack of around 8-9 images taken at varying ISOs ranging from 200 to 2000 and shutter speeds from 1/200 to 1/3200. taken with my D90 at prime focus through my 8" newtonian telescope.

I'm new at astrophotography, so any C&C is welcome

I was actually out trying to get some good nebula or other DSOs but was having trouble tracking for long exposures.

 

[peacock]

I don't own a telescope personally so I wouldn't be able to judge it, but in my opinion it's quite a decent shot. Would be better if it's sharper. Have you tried playing with the gamma? Helped me with my first few shots of the moon using my Sigma 200mm .

Here's my picture, with some PP.


Original pics used to combine:

 

[Aloicious]

I don't own a telescope personally so I wouldn't be able to judge it, but in my opinion it's quite a decent shot. Would be better if it's sharper. Have you tried playing with the gamma? Helped me with my first few shots of the moon using my Sigma 200mm .

yeah, the sharpness is mostly due to the fact that my telescope doesn't have a 10:1 focus knob, its only 1:1, which makes it much more difficult to get spot on, this one was MUCH better than previous ones I took though, I find that if I use live view zoomed all the way in on the D90's LCD display, I can get it really close. I just need to get a better focuser is what it comes down to.

I like your shots, the halo around the moon is interesting.
this is the first moon shot I ever did using my D90 and 200mm Nikkor zoom lens, I think it was around f5.6 and 1/360s. or something like that, this is a full size crop too. as you can see, the one I posted above is leaps and bounds better than this.

 

[peacock]

Yea, the first one is better.

How is this one?

Sharpened your first pic and made the outline of the moon look better. Also added some saturation to exaggerate the brown patches.

 

[timethief]

edited version looks much better.

 

[Aloicious]

yeah not too shabby. still getting the hang of post processing these kind of shots. what editing software are you using? CS4/5?

 

[peacock]

Yup, I think I used a combination of Smart Sharpening, unsharp mask, exposure adjustment, masking and refining edge, and Replace colour.

 

[Aloicious]

Yup, I think I used a combination of Smart Sharpening, unsharp mask, exposure adjustment, masking and refining edge, and Replace colour.

nice, I gotta get better at the post-processing.

thanks for the help