While hosting an astronomy campout for a group of college students and faculty members last weekend, we imaged the Moon using a DMK 21F04 firewirecam. My best shot of the evening was of Maurolycus and the surrounding area.

Here is the full-resolution image:

It was made using the SV152 apo and a Televue 4X Powermate. Seeing was decent. The smallest details I can identify in this image are between 3 and 5 kilometers in diameter.

I used Registax 4 and 23 alignment points for post processing. Some of the steps are shown below.

This is the set of alignment points:

You have two choices when using MAP:

• Make the alignment boxes very small and space them widely.
• Make the alignment boxes moderately large (compared to features in the image) and overlap them.

Either of these approaches helps avoid processing artifacts that appear along the boundaries of the alignment areas. This screen shot shows the alignment areas R4 calculates from the alignment points and box sizes:

Notice the Feathering option setting near the upper right in the Tool bar: set your feathering to a maximum of about half the size of the average alignment box overlap -- not size! -- (in pixels) to minimize processing artifacts.

This screen:

shows the gamma and histogram stretches I applied to improve the contrast in the image. If seeing is good and the camera is cool, I normally do not apply any gamma correction. But I usually need a histogram stretch for lunar images. Note that in this point I applied only about 11 points at each end of the brightness range.

Going back to the Alignment Points screen for a moment:

notice the wavelets settings at left. This is not particularly aggressive wavelet processing. If you make an image during good seeing, and you are careful about selecting frames to exclude using the Stackgraphs prior to stacking, then your power curves for the separate alignment areas will be smoother. I normally use what I call the Pareto method of excluding frames: I keep 80 to 90 percent of the frames from a Quality standpoint, and then "mow the grass" with the Difference slider -- clipping off 10 to 20 percent of the "peaks" on the power curve.

The way the wavelet levels work is that the uppermost level controls large details in the image, and the lowermost level controls the smallest details. For the levels in between, I usually minimize wavelet sharpening to provide a smoother result in the final stack.

I think this is my best-ever image of Maurolycus, which is one of my favorite areas of the Moon to observe.

Very nice.  I haven’t done anything with the moon in a while.  I think I’ll give your suggestions here a try.

Good tutorial there Jeff. I miss your input on here. And others that have come and gone. Feels like where it all began for me.Great to see you teaching on here again.If you have the effect you had on me then its very worthwhile indeed. I hope others take the time to learn what your offereing here. because in some ways i think it can literally. change your life.. And for the better.Good show. And nice shots.

Btw I may at some point get a Orion ( uk )  12" newt possibly f7. maybe f6. 1/10th pv

With fan. 9 point ally mirror cell. curved spider. and small secondary. You have seen what ive been doing with other orion. This scope hopefully should destroy it.But at f7 its maybe a little to difficult to work with. which is why im thinking possibly f6 any input is apreciated. hope you dont mind me chatting on your thread. Its been a while since we chatted. no problem if your busy

Yes, the Registax group on Yahoo is very helpful. Several of those guys have good tutorials and Cor Berrevoets, the author, hangs out there from time to time.