Tom OD

Hi SGL Here is a lucky capture of a very bright Perseid that left a smoke trail in Green, then fading to Brown over a few minutes. I was going to stop the exposure but as there was still a smoke trail I let it run the full 60s, so I have over exposed the lights from nearby Baltimore Cork Ireland. 60s, 14mm, ISO 3200, Canon Ra, static shot. A friend in the meteor watch group is trying to triangulate this as he has two cameras captures, and plenty of positional data to work from. There may be more to tell about this Perseid when he is finished. Thanks Tom.

Superb mosaic. The detail for the, what I would consider short integration, is stunning. I ve been lucky to see this is a higher res too. Wonder what the Mono version with a Ha filter would get? Tom.

Gorgeous image. Well done. Tom

Super Peter, As it turns out I m imaging that object too right now. I was in a different part of the sky in Cygnus, and the mount lost the guide star and moved away. I was taking O3 at the time, and I spotted this is the wrong sub. Looked cool, so I changed object. Thanks for posting, I could not find it in any catalogue I was looking up. I must google some more of the MWP objects. Tom.

Cool. Tom

That Ha is super. Love the whispy bits at the top if the image. Tom

Pretty cool Olly. I dont think I have seen that bow shock before. Wonder if I can help and shoot some data at 530mm in O3. I have a decent O3 filter. Not 3nm but its ok. Tom

I have yet to try the SGP mosaic to its fullest. Despite currently running two mosaics. I am still doing them manually. In a manner as Olly explained above. Old habits die hard, but I should get SGP mosaic up and running as you can spend a lot of time working on pane centering and figuring out how much overlap. Mind you the Plate in SGP is great, and being able to "centre" the frame by right clicking is great, and easy to use. I have the other advantage of a full frame camera, so I have plenty of room for overlap. If you have a small chip, the mosaic program would help you manage the amount of area lost better than manually doing it. Tom.

That looks great. The sharpening in the 2nd version looks perfect. Tom

Jonas makes classy pics. I need a bigger and better monitor / tv. Thanks to all for your comments. I m happy it being enjoyed in this format. Tom

Lovely to hear a lot of people have seen the print on Ollys wall. It certainly belongs on the walls in Ollys. No better place to have one. Tom

Yes Olly had been asking about a bigger version for a long time, so it only took 5 years to finally deliver. As it turns out this had to broken into 1024 images to create the zoom version. As for the Witchhead...... I started that Mosaic Winter 2019. I already have the Witchead in a 2 pane image, but the Winter Project is more of a 6 pane wide field, which would stitch to the 400hr Orion and enhance it even more. The Witchhead region will have the same, if not more data in each pane. When I m in my 60's I'll go the other side out to NGC2170 Tom

Thanks Guys for checking it out. I'll be putting all the mosaics, or John will be in due course on the website. So there will be more to enjoy soon. Tom.

I m happy to say that the 400hr Orion image is now available to view at 40% full size through Zoomify on my website. Click on the Full Screen button then zoom and pan away. https://www.astrophotography.ie/mosaics.htm This is almost the 1.8m x 1.0m size that I print out as the largest size. So now you can see the Mosaic as it was meant to be seen. Big, very big. The 14hrs per frame really shows in the detail, colour and quality as you zoom in and in. The overlays of the 1m data from the TECs on M42, Horsehead, Running Man, and M78 look excellent at this size too. I hope you enyoy it in a new way. Thanks to my friend John Caffrey for working on the site, and to Olly Penrice for joining me in this project. Tom.

Great IC342 image, that is a very tricky one to process. Tom

That came out well. The background is nice and smooth. Tom

Excellent quality image Pieter. I like the ellipse shape at the bottom of the frame. Tom

By the way Adam Block does a very good tutorial on small and tiny star suppression. It keeps them round, and does not just dim them like some of the PI Morp routines can do. Its great but tricky to get right on areas neat the Milky Way or images that go very deep. Here is a not so perfect attempt side by side. I know I can do a little better. Tom

Nice work Olly I think the image on the right should accompany the image on the left, in a manner that allows a better look at the nebula and some structure than is revealed. So the image on the right is important and on such wide-field areas of the sky it helps bring out all the dust. However as far as a representation of the area goes, I prefer the left image with stars. Tom

Pretty cool It does seem weird to bin 4 x 4 then drizzle. As opposed to shooting in Bin 3 for example. But it certainly seems to work. Tom

Think that is the first bin 4 x 4 image I ve ever see. Great job. Tom

Appreciate that Chris, thanks. Cheers Brendan Thanks Goran, this is the Tak FSQ106ED, (but it has edge issues that I need to fix) and the old Atik 11 meg CCD, on a Mesu 200

Cheers Olly. Yes its a total tree skimmer. It barely makes it on to the weather web cam You need a lot of data, and each frame needs to be scruntinised for hazy / misty clouds and reflections. Mind you there are a lot of blue halos on the bright stars. The difference an object like this being 10 degrees higher in the sky is huge. Its out of the murk, and you'll get nearly twice the imaging time on it. Less noisy data too. Tom.

Hi SGL This is a beautiful region at the head of the Scorpion, but it only reaches 19.5 max from my observatory. I began collecting data at +15degrees, and then I only managed 2hrs per night. At that low a latitude the data was noisy and tricky to balance. Add to that, I lost 2 nights when the entire was clear except this narrow region in the South, so I needed lots of nights to get enough data for this. I might get some more Lum and then try Ha on this, but here is 12hrs RGB with just 2hrs Lum gently added in. I pushed this really far, as the area is so colourful. The hardest bit of this image is the sheer amount of tiny stars being so close to the Milky Way Center. I went to town on them, but it might not be too noticeful in this smaller size version. Thanks Tom.

Well V2 is a huge improvement I think on V1. Degreening helped too. Super image. Tom