ASTROSTITCH !!! N E W !!!
On April 17, 2005 my Norwegian friend and QCUIAG member Carsten Arnholm informed me that he had spotted Autostitch, which is an AUTOMATIC Mosaic construction software package.
I found it hard to believe but I fed 19 mosaic pieces into Autostitch and the result was astonishing !
You can see for yourself by downloading these 19 pieces and let Autostitch do it's magic.

QCUIAG member David Dench wrote:
I have been using AutoStitch and championing its virtues for some months now.
There are a couple of tricks to getting the best out of it.
Make sure you have generous overlaps, set the scale to 100% and turn off Auto Straighten.
Other astro users have found that adding one frame at a time can fool it in to working when the sledgehammer didn't work.

Here follows the full text of how I make my moon mosaics. Surely there must be better scenarios, but here are my own experiences.

METHOD 1: DRIFT 'FLY-BY' MODE

IMAGING

• First we need to obtain the correct focus. As focusing on the moon is not so easy, I use a nearby star to focus on. The goal is to get a nice round pinpointed dot on the screen of your computer.
  It is nice to have some focusing tools to help you.
• I recommend to use a rather short exposure time, thus preventing possible unsharpness caused by the rotation of the Earth. You can play with the camera settings (brightness/contrast/gamma/gain) to arrive at the optimal setting for your set-up, with just the right signal/noise ratio.
  To set the White Balance: put White Balance in Auto and aim at the centre of the moon and wait 10 seconds, then freeze the White Balance by unchecking Auto White Balance (i.e. Auto White Balance OFF).
  For my own setup f=1200mm, Philips Vesta SC3 (4.7um pixel size) the Moon movement is about 15 pixels per second, so for me the exposure time should not exceed 1/30s (1/2 pixel precision), but it is better to have a shorter exposure time. As a rule: the higher the focal length the shorter exposure is required.
• I aim the scope at the top of the moon and then shift the scope westwards, so that the moon is just out of sight.
  Important: make sure your camera is mounted in perfect East-West direction: see here how to do this.
• I switch the RA motor drive OFF and wait a few seconds. Yes: here comes the moon on my screen, in a nice fluid 'fly-by' motion.
  Note: in this Drift mode ('Fly-By') method I do not make a lot of individual AVI's but just piece the best of the raw unprocessed frames together.
  I prefer BIG moons, so I image in prime focus and not with focal reducer.
  But that is a personal choice, I guess ..
• I move the scope westwards a bit, till the moon is again just out of sight.
• The moon appears on the screen again and using K3CCDTools I automatically capture one frame every 5 seconds, thus ensuring that in the end I will have enough satisfactory frames to select from at mosaic construction time: sometimes seeing changes during the imaging session ....
  

  A nice by-product of capturing all those frames, is that - in addition to being used for the mosaic - the individual frames can also be used later for detailed study and comparison. See my Moon details pages! During the imaging I enjoy the majestic real time movie of the moon on the screen. I continue to make images until the moon has drifted out of sight.

• Then I turn the scope down a bit and swing it westwards of the moon again and shoot the next slice, until the whole moon has been scanned.
  Make sure you have LOTS of overlap: about 1/3 of the image ... just to be on the safe side, or else :-[
  Usually I after swinging back I have a quick look at the image on the screen, and then decide what feature I want where after changing the DEC.
  I do not close the current AVI file, but let it continue to capture frames. The few frames that were captured while positioning for the next slice I simply ignore at mosaic construction time.
• Some statistics: imaging the almost full moon in fly-by mode takes me about 17 minutes; frames captured: about 200 [automatically in K3CCDTools one frame each per 5 seconds]; frames used for mosaic: about 25; time spent constructing the mosaic with iMerge: 40 minutes.

CONSTRUCTING The Mosaic

This used to be a time consuming and eye straining activity: with painstaking precision the individual frames had to be merged with each other without any seams showing of course.
I did this in Photoshop with the feathering technique, which involved a lot of 'mousing' and movements with pixel precision.

That is all over now: Jon Grove has written iMerge (runs under Windows) which does the 'piecing together' with minimal involvement from your end.
Thank you Jon for such a marvellous piece of software !!
To finalise the mosaic:

• Save the completed mosaic as a BMP.
• Load the completed mosaic in Registax and *gently* apply some wavelets: do not overdo.
• Finally load the completed mosaic in your favourite histogram tweaking program and make it look the way you like it best.
  Hint: check the brighter parts to make sure you do not loose details.

METHOD 2: AVI MODE

QCUIAG friend and fellow Dutchman Rob Kantelberg enhanced my fly-by technique: he aims at the moon and shoots AVI's - with the RA Motor ON - until he has covered the whole moon.
After processing his AVI's he also uses iMerge to construct the final mosaic.
On October 30, 2004 I used both scenarios to find out if Rob's more laborious technique was worth the effort: see below.

Click on the image to see my results side-by-side and click here (655K) to view an animated presentation of the different versions. This animation (also includes a version with noise reduction in NeatImage).

BATCH post processing of 'moon mosaic AVIs'.

Note: for more information about the tools I use: see the Help of the related tool.
All tools are listed on my Software page.

• Open the first AVI in Registax 3 and process in the normal manner, including the wavelets.
  When you are happy with the results check the wavelet box 'hold wavelet settings'
  Reopen the AVI and check 'Automatic' and press the 'Align' button.
  Now the whole AVI is processed automatically, including wavelets processing.
  Save the resulting image as a bmp, with as suffix '_rgxautowav'.
  Now process the rest of the AVIs.
• As the Registax processing puts a little white edge on the resulting frames this edge must be cut off.
  For this I use the Batch processing function of Irfanview, with as parameters:
  X coord: 4; Width 632
  Y coord: 4, Height 472
  I save the output as bmps with the suffix '_cropped'.
• I open all the cropped bmps from the previous step in K3CCDTools and do a 'File' 'Export frame collection' and save as '_cropped.AVI'
• Load this AVI in iMerge and you can piece the mosaic together: while doing so the tension increases, because you are not yet very sure that no 'pieces' are missing ...
  Save the complete mosaic as a BMP.
• Load the completed mosaic in Registax and *gently* apply some wavelets: do not overdo.
• Finally load the completed mosaic in your favourite histogram tweaking program and make it look the way you like it best.
  Hint: check the brighter parts to make sure you do not loose details.

FULL MOON with 2x Barlow: how long it took to IMAGE and CONSTRUCT

Imaging: about 30 minutes (49 AVI's of 30 seconds @ 10 fps) Processing in RegiStax: 2 minutes per AVI, so just under 2 hours Rotate/crop in Irfanview and make an AVI in K3CCDTools: 5 minutes (most of the time was used to find out 'how to') Mosaic in iMerge: I did not look at the clock, but I assume about 20 -30 minutes. Photoshop: ~ 15 minutes for histogram tweaking, adding text etc.

Mosaic of the Terminator of the 9 day 7 hour old moon

December 7, 2008 19:23 - 19:54. 9 Piece Mosaic of the Terminator of the 9 day 7 hour old moon [2500 x 6000 pixels; 932 Kb] Imaged with LX 200 10-inch f/10 [focal length 2500mm] in prime focus. Camera: Trust WB-5400 webcam in 1280x1024 pixels format. Post processing of the individual AVIs: as per my Planetary Post Processing Tutorial. Mosaic: manually constructed in Photoshop. Seeing: 8/10, transparency 7/10, almost freezing. I had problems in imaging the bottom part of the mosaic because of trees ...