Imaging the moon - stacking multiple exposures

After I took a lot of images of this weeks lunar eclipse, I tried to stack some of them. I still had Registax6 installed - but never really used it. So, this time I tried to use it. But every time it came to stacking the images I got a "Out of memory" error. I found a couple of references on the web and people recommended to lower the number of alignment points. I chose 20, 10, 5 - even 3. Always with the same result.

I did some more research and came across this post where somebody used a suite of other tools to stack lunar and planetary images:

• PIPP for alignment
• Autostakkert2 for stacking
• Registax6 or AstraImage for deconvolution*

I followed the instructions and have to say that everything went very smoothly. Instead of repeating the process (it's really well described) here are just the individual stages:

1. Raw JPEG:

2. After stacking with PiPP/Autostakkert2:

(interestingly, the image looks almost worse now!)

3. Deconvolution with AstraImage

(the details are back!)

4. Level adjustment with Photoshop:

And this is the full image:

Maybe I should do these more often...

* I was looking for instructions to do the sharpening in Pixinsight. But the only tutorial is pretty old and not on the web site anymore - you can only find it through webarchive (without most of the images :-(