Solar mosaic - full h-alpha disc, August 22nd

[Starman]

Hi all,

Here's a full disc mosaic taken this afternoon. A fairly quiet Sun at the moment although there was a bright northwestern prom visible and a lovely southeastern filament, rotating into view. Mosaic is made up of 20 panes, hand stitched together.

Best regards,

Pete

[KE400]

Excellent mosaic Pete, may I ask how you stitch the images together?

What software/processing do you use?

Thanks for posting

[Starman]

Hi Kevin,

I stitch the panes together by hand using Photoshop. Each pane dropped into a separate later, aligned with the ones below and then eraser blended at the edges to hide (hopefully!) any straight edges. Ideally I'd then run through and do a fine tune curves adjust on each pane to make sure it matches its surroundings but I'm meeting some mates tonight and time's running out

Pete

[KE400]

Thanks for the info Pete, I'll look into that as I'm aiming to give it a go myself soon.

I don't think there's much need for the fine tuning, it looks great as it is!

[madjohn]

Wonderful image Pete! and I agree with Kevin no more fine tuning required! I can't see the joins anyways!

[Starman]

Thanks chaps

[smerral]

great full disc

[David Smith]

Outstanding

[Zakalwe]

Very, very nice job.

Have you tried Microsoft ICE for stitching?

[Montana]

Absolutely magnificent! you have a great deal of patience.

Have you ever tried using Photomerge in Photoshop? if you tick the vignette button it also blends everything together extremely well too and only takes seconds to stitch everything together. It works very well for my full discs.

Alexandra

[Zakalwe]

Absolutely magnificent! you have a great deal of patience.

Have you ever tried using Photomerge in Photoshop? if you tick the vignette button it also blends everything together extremely well too and only takes seconds to stitch everything together. It works very well for my full discs.

Alexandra

What a cracking tip!!!

I've just given that a go, and it seems to give great results. Brilliant!

[Starman]

I've used ICE and iMerge but not Photomerge. To be honest, the first two give good results from a distance but looking close into the final mosaic, I would often find errors. Either poor edges or duplicated regions in the main image. The only way to be really sure it's right, in my opinion, is to do it yourself

[Montana]

Go on Pete, give it a try

I must admit 20 panes is a lot but it seems to handle my 12 panes OK

Alexandra

[DrRobin]

Excellent image Pete,

20 frames all processed then stitched together by hand, you must have the patience of a saint!

[Starman]

Ok - I ran the panes through PhotoMerge and the result is shown below. Unfortnuately, I can see the joins and because the process give you non-overlapping layers for each pane, there's little I can do about getting rid of the edges. If the conditions were perfectly stable - no scudding clouds etc., then it might work for me but at the moment, manual is the way I'm happy with.

That's a great mosaic Alexandra - what filter did you use for that?

Thanks DrRobin - actually it's a lot quicker than it sounds. I'm using a very fast PC so processing each pane only takes 30s or so a go. I can normally build a full mosaic in about 15-20 minutes.

Here's my Photomerge effort...

Pete

[Montana]

Hmmm I see what you mean, I'd be itching to erase those uneven bits as well, it was worth a try though.

My picture was taken with a Solarscope SF-100 filter.

Alexandra

[luis]

Beautifull !!!