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How to film the Moon with a Seestar
Stacking can only keep the detail your video holds. Most of the difference between a soft Moon and a crisp one is decided when you press record.
Updated 25 October 2026
Record video, in RAW if you can
Use the Seestar's lunar mode and record video rather than taking a single photo. RAW video (files ending -RAW.avi) keeps the sensor's data untouched by compression. It stacks into the cleanest result and the best mineral colour. MP4 works, but compression removes some of the finest detail before stacking even starts.
RAW clips are large, up to about 1 GB per minute, so make sure the Seestar has free storage.
Shoot when the Moon is high
Near the horizon you look through much more air. The Moon shimmers more, and the atmosphere splits its edge into a blue fringe on one side and a red one on the other. Aim for the Moon at least 30° above the horizon, and higher is better. Its highest point each night is when it crosses south (in the northern hemisphere) or north (in the southern).
Find steady air
- Avoid heat sources in the line of sight: rooftops, chimneys, car parks and paving that warmed up during the day.
- Set up early. Give the Seestar 20–30 minutes outside to reach the night's temperature.
- Watch the live view. If the Moon's edge boils and ripples, the air is unsteady. Wait, or record more clips and keep fewer frames when stacking.
- Avoid haze. Thin cloud and haze add a glow around the Moon and dim the detail. AstroSlide removes the glow, but it can't restore the lost contrast.
Exposure: don't burn the highlights
If your app lets you set exposure and gain, keep the brightest craters, like Tycho, Copernicus and Aristarchus, just below pure white. Detail that is clipped to white is gone in every frame, and stacking can't bring it back. A slightly dark video is fine: stacking removes the noise that brightening would show.
Shorter exposures freeze the shimmer of the air better. If you must choose between a bit more gain and a longer exposure, choose the gain.
Clip length: several short clips beat one long one
Record clips of 30 seconds to 2 minutes, back to back. More frames mean less noise, and several clips give you a choice if one was taken during a moment of bad air. AstroSlide stacks several clips from one night together and corrects the slow rotation of the image between them.
Keep the whole Moon inside the frame: frames where it touches the edge are skipped.
Focus
Run autofocus before you record, and again if the temperature drops a lot during the session. A slightly soft focus looks like poor air and can't be fixed afterwards.
Get the files off without losing detail
Lunar videos are in the folder MyWorks/Lunar_video on the Seestar. Connecting the Seestar to a computer with USB shows it as a drive. Copy the original files from there.
Don't pass the video through a messaging app. WhatsApp and similar apps recompress and shrink video. In one test, a 960×536 RAW clip came back as an 832×464 MP4 with its fine detail gone.
Which phase?
- Around first and last quarter: long shadows along the terminator show craters and mountains in strong relief.
- Around full Moon: little relief, but every mare is lit, which is best for a mineral Moon.
Then stack it
With your clips copied, follow how to stack Seestar Moon video, or go straight to AstroSlide and drop them in.