Process the MOON to perfection with PIPP, Autostakkert and PixInsight

Thank you Sascha for the great video. I just retired ( no more getting up at 0430 hrs for work) and now have all the time in the world to observe and image the moon. This video was just what I was looking for, it was easy to follow and understand. Thanks again:planet-orange-purple-ring:

Thanks for doing this, this is the 2nd time I've had to go through this video to remember the steps :-)

This appeared at just the right time because I will be purchasing a dedicated astro camera for planetary and lunar photography, and I am leaning toward the ZWO ASI585MC, which I believe is the same camera model you used for the image of the moon. I’ve got PIPP and AutoStakert on my laptop and PixInsight on my Mac, so your workflow was perfect. I found your use of PixInsight especially helpful. By the way, I have also started your PixInsight series of videos, and even though I’ve gone through several of Adam Block’s, I still learned some new things from your first one. I have been subscribed to your channel for several months now and always find your videos very helpful and authoritative. Please keep them coming!

Hi Sascha, that's exactly the video I was asking you for. Thanks for this and it's really quite interesting to see how you process moon images.

I really appreciate your guides and this has been so helpful. You have a natural gift to present and cater perfectly to my level of skill and understanding. Thank you for this guide, I’m now off to buy a IR 685 Filter because the seeing is poor where I live. Please keep the helpful videos coming, I have your whole channel to watch now for advice and lessons!😊

I’ve just dropped BlurXterminator triangle into my moon stacked image….just WOW. Thanks!

Absolutely amazing tutorial. Thank you.

Thank you for having the pipp DL file! youre a legend.

Hi Sascha, another great video and exactly what I needed. I captured the annular sun with my little Dwarf 2 and did not know how to process the videos. I want to start doing moon photography too. Thanks for all the information and great Tutorials! Diana

Grüzi Sacha, thanks for the video. I actually did my very first stacking last week and the target was the Moon ! Compared to your process, I didn't pre-process with PIPP due to my low image count for the entire surface (~1000), though AutoStakkert did much of the heavy lifting with Darktable instead of PixInsight for final touches. The biggest difference was shooting at high exp/low gain (9ms), whereas you do the opposite ! It appears the SNR is still good so I'll try that to image faster. The IR trick is clever too, will definitely keep it in mind.

I like the idea of using BlurXterminator for sharpening the moon image. It's always a good sign when a network performs so well for data it has not been trained on.

WOW👍👍👍 BXT is a great tip (I went with Sharpen Unless at 0.75 on my full moon, otherwise it was too sharp. I didn't notice any difference with Sharpen Stars at 0.15)

Another great video

Nicely done. 🙂

Very nice work flow. In PIPP, I usually Debayerize and manually choose my matrix (RGGB). PIPP many times chooses the wrong Bayer matrix. Then in Autostakkert I process the image as RGB. I have also tested your workflow and the results are the same as my process. I currently use the Astronomik IR Pro Planet 807nm filter, which is great for my ASI 462MC Thanks for sharing the PIPP installer which is no longer on the web.

Hello Sascha, your videos are great! 😀 I also already have made some days ago a moon picture, and my workflow was quite similar yours. I didn't know the local histogram equalization technique, and be sure l'll try it on. My file size was 22Gb. In the end I ended up buying a x86 tower instead mac. That was because I had the opportunity of using a M1 max Mac with autostakkert and I saw the procesing time. With my x86 procesing times are similar as yours. I fully appreciate your videos ☺

Excellent video! I'm fairly new to lunar imaging (had done mostly deep-sky). I had tried NoiseXTerminator on a lunar image with pretty good results, but had not considered BlurXT. I found that the latest version of BlurXT, with AI Version 4, actually worked "too well" and converted some small crater rings into "stars". I switched back to AI Version 2 and it worked fine. Thanks!

Thanks for the tutorial 👍 I can suggest also a final touch of UnsharpMask if you still need a bit more sharpness

Gracias hno

Very interesting. Could you explain what other filters (if any) you use in conjunction with the IR filter ?