January 16 2025 11:30pm

While re-building the PC at the VCO we took a break to point the Takahashi TOA130s refractor at the waning gibbous moon, Complete with a dramatic terminator the affected craters were in high contrast relief. The rays coming from Tycho, one of the youngest craters of the Moon radiating for distances that I had not noticed before.

Using lucky imaging techniques I captured 4 video streams hoping to tame the turbulent atmosphere that I was seeing with initial test frames. Each video in SER format contained 2000 full sensor size frames (3008 x 3008).

In processing I selected a video stream and used Astrostakkert software to select 50% of the frames of the highest quality. These would be aligned and stacked to produce a superior sharp image.

Telescope: Takahashi TOA130s with .7 reducer effective focal length 700mm
Sensor: ZWO ASI533MC
Exposure: gain 150 video mode 20fps 1/500 second at f/5.4
Mount: Paramount ME
Processing: Astrostakkert, Pixinsight, Topaz De-Noise, Adobe Photoshop 2025