For really bright objects such as the Moon, this doesn’t hurt us nearly as much as you’d think. This often yields extraordinarily slow-focal-ratios we’d normally run screaming from, such as f/30 or more. The Setupįor this kind of work we want long focal lengths and small pixels (Very much unlike deep-sky astrophotography). Really smooth images are important, and I’ll circle back around to this in a bit. We can even combine, or stack, these images like we do with deep-sky photos to get smoother images with very little noise. Unless seeing is especially bad, there will always be a few good images that are usable. What we can do is play a statistics game, similar to casting a wide net in fishing: If we take as many images as possible - say, hundreds or thousands of them - very quickly, we can employ special software that analyzes all of those frames and picks out just the sharper images. This image was taken at 4,200mm of focal length at. How can we grab an image during this fleeting window of opportunity? For bright objects such as the Moon, it is possible to shoot at extreme pixel scales. For these tiny fractions of a second, an image can be recorded at a very small pixel scale, often as small as 0.1 arcsecond per pixel. However, there are fleeting moments of stillness where your target comes through exceptionally clearly. No matter how fast your shutter speed, you may still shoot blurry or distorted images. Lucky imaging isn't just useful for the Moon - everything here applies just as readily to the planets and even high-resolution images of the Sun (through appropriate filters, of course).Įven with very fast exposures, the atmosphere is still seething. This technique is used to record hundreds or even thousands of images over a short timespan in order to capture some images when the seeing is momentarily steady. This month we are going to take lunar astrophotography one more step and talk about a widely employed technique for high-resolution images of the Moon called lucky imaging. Here, we show how to use lucky imaging for the Moon.Ĭapturing a sharp image through a turbulent atmosphere requires a different approach compared to most deep-sky imaging. Despite its name, luck has nothing to do with 'lucky imaging.' The technique is a powerful tool for crisp, clear astrophotography.

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