Belt and Sword - First Mosaic

[JohnC64]

Well would'y you know it, the evening that we made plans to go out with friends it was a stunningly clear night. Why does that always happen  

So I got back home at 11-30 and set up.  As I was short on time for a proper stab at this, I decided to do a trial run on a mosaic of Orion's Belt and Sword.  I haven't done a mosaic before so thought that playing with a set of data would give me the skills to do a proper job when i come to it. (And avoid missing chunks!!! - maybe next time )

So this is 6 panes each comprising of 6x 150Sec subs at ISO 800 on a cannon 1100D(Modded) on the Esprit 80.  Each pane was stacked in PixInsight and then I went through the StarAlignment - Union Mosaic process and then one i had done that reregistered and put the data through the GradientMerge Mosaic routine. I then dis a light stretch to improve the contrast. The GradientMergeMosaic routine is simply incredible. It did all the heavy lifting on putting the image together and adjusting the backgrounds to match.  Any seams that you can see are a result of me tweaking the image later.

Hope you enjoy

John

[symesie04]

Oddly its almost exactly the same FOV as the 200mm (280mm on crop sensor) that i posted recently. Nice and clean though. Could do with some more data. Promising.

[Gina]

Yes indeed - a nice start   More data would help a lot.  PI has certainly done a good job of joining the panes seamlessly    I have the trial version of PI but since getting it I've hardly had any imaging time!     I think it very likely that I'll end up buying PI.  Have to have the right tool for the job

[Epicycle]

Mosaics of these area are great. I agree: the gradient merge mosaic is awesome! Any reason why you didn't crop the top bit? If you were worried

a bit about leaving out the top left corner, you can always rotate a small amount with the DynamicCrop to keep it in.

Last night was indeed an unexpected clear night in the Fens!

E.

[JohnC64]

Cheers All,

Currently having another go at processing this now. Will look at better preparing the panels before making the mosaic.

Oddly its almost exactly the same FOV as the 200mm (280mm on crop sensor) that i posted recently. Nice and clean though. Could do with some more data. Promising.

Just had a look at your Image - very nice field of view to get the same FOW in one go.  Maybe i need to get by 135 lens back out again.
 

 I think it very likely that I'll end up buying PI.  Have to have the right tool for the job

Hi Gina, PI is very very good.  It has a bit of an arcane interface at times, but once you get used to it its fine.  Also plenty of great video tutorials on line from The Pixinsight team,  Harry Page and many other great people. I'm still learning my way around and it never fails to impess.  I find that you just have to apply some of  the processing tools with a light touch at times to get  the natural look that i like.
 

 Any reason why you didn't crop the top bit? If you were worried a bit about leaving out the top left corner, you can always rotate a small amount with the DynamicCrop to keep it in.

Last night was indeed an unexpected clear night in the Fens!

Hi Epicycle - I think that the reason is that  I am a dullard at times   .  Didn't twig that the rotate would neatly trim things up for me. Thanks for the pointer in the right direction. Glad to see another Fen dweller on here :-)

[JohnC64]

Heres a further reprocess on this data.  This time i stretched before doing the mosaic and have brought out some more detail.You can see the joins on the seams in this version so i probably need to try increasing the feather radius parameter to see if that will help.

Definitely more data and time required on this one(oh  and flats and darks too ;-) ) But at least now I have a better understanding of building mosaics

Cheers John