Mosaics and stitching

[IvanT]

Hi,

On my iPhone I use an excellent little app called SkySafari to help me decide on and locate the DSOs I'd like to image. This winter I'd like to make a real effort to get a decent M31.

The app has a handy feature that overlays the screen with the apparent FoV of the camera at prime focus giving you a good idea of how best to frame the shot.

As you can see below, I'm not going to be able to capture the whole galaxy in my camera FoV in one framed shot.

So my question is on mosaics and stitching in PS CS4, are there any guides on here that would be worth having a look at to help me understand what's involved, the do's and don'ts etc?

[Bizibilder]

You can use Microsoft ICE, Photostitch, Autostitch, imerge to name but a few! All are free and all work to make mosaics.

[spanky]

You can do this in photoshop dead easy.

File > Automate > Photomerge

Then just load the files and let it do its thing.

Never used it for astro but done several panoramas with it and it's a doddle! This was 11 portrait frames:

[IvanT]

Nice one, thanks!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[mark7331]

Nice heads up on the iPhone app Ivan. Cheers.

[IvanT]

Nice heads up on the iPhone app Ivan. Cheers.

No problem, gives you something to do with all the recent cloud. I found the feature by mistake.

If anyone else thinks they'd use it, you need to enter your CCD size in degrees. I converted my 1000d (22.2mm x 14.8 mm) into degrees for the app using:

(57 x 22.2) / 1000 = 1.2654

(57 x 14.8) / 1000 = 0.8436

Then rotate the camera angle to suit your DSO