1st Attempt At A Mosiac

[StuartJPP]

All of 2 panels...Lagoon (M8) and Trifid (M20)...this was more accidental than planned. My recent M8 and M20 data overlapped so I spent a tiny bit of time aligning and joining them...

Taken on holiday in Fuerteventura on the 03 May 2014.

Baader Modified Canon 650D with Canon 500mm f/4 L IS lens @ ISO800.
AstroTrac TT320X-AG (Unguided).

~60x 90 second lights for each panel
20x Darks
20x Flats
20x Bias

Thanks for looking...

Lagoon (M8) And Trifid (M20) Mosiac by StuartJPP, on Flickr

[oldpink]

wow for such short exposures you really got a lot of detail

I take it you had some decent dark skies, wish I was back in Spain

[The BFJ]

WOW...

Truly awesome image. Absolutely stunning!

I really must get my budget sorted. At the rate I'm going it'll be at least a year before I get around to AP.

[Kropster]

Spectacular!

[PhotoGav]

Excellent, that has worked brilliantly! They were great images on their own, but they look spectacular together.

How did you go about stitching the two panels together? I'm in the middle of experiments with four pane mosaics using Photoshop, having some success, but it's certainly quite tricky to get an invisible seam.

[Mr Spock]

Amazing image. It's almost 3D.

[Gina]

Magnificent image - well done

[StuartJPP]

Thanks everyone...

Excellent, that has worked brilliantly! They were great images on their own, but they look spectacular together.

How did you go about stitching the two panels together? I'm in the middle of experiments with four pane mosaics using Photoshop, having some success, but it's certainly quite tricky to get an invisible seam.

I used Photoshop layers to rotate one of the images to get them both to line up, a bit tricky but once you have aligned it properly everything clicks into place. Since they weren't processed exactly the same I had to tweak the colours in one of them, I did this by using the "Colour Sampler Tool" to help get the colours aligned...there must be an easier way to do this but there were only two panels for me to worry about.

[Adamar98]

Thats a beauty. Bravo.

[PhotoGav]

I used Photoshop layers to rotate one of the images to get them both to line up, a bit tricky but once you have aligned it properly everything clicks into place. Since they weren't processed exactly the same I had to tweak the colours in one of them, I did this by using the "Colour Sampler Tool" to help get the colours aligned...there must be an easier way to do this but there were only two panels for me to worry about.

Interesting, did you find that the two panels lined up exactly or were some of the stars slightly out? My experience so far is that I can get about 95% of the stars lined up. I have then fiddled a bit with the areas that are not quite aligned.

[Gina]

Thanks everyone...

I used Photoshop layers to rotate one of the images to get them both to line up, a bit tricky but once you have aligned it properly everything clicks into place. Since they weren't processed exactly the same I had to tweak the colours in one of them, I did this by using the "Colour Sampler Tool" to help get the colours aligned...there must be an easier way to do this but there were only two panels for me to worry about.

I use RegiStar to align images - works beautifully   The UI is a bit old fashioned but it works really well so I'll forgive that

[PhotoGav]

I have seen that Registar is the go to app for alignment, but have been slightly put off by the $149 price tag for my current experiments. Is it worth the dollars and does it do a significantly better / easier job than a manual approach n PS?

Sorry to take this thread on a bit of a tangent.... Especially as the OP is a perfect stitch and I can't work out where the seam is!

[Coco]

Thats the best DSLR image mosaic Ive seen on this site... its very special

[peter shah]

stunning image

[ollypenrice]

That's a glorious result. You also have NGC6559 which is a delightful little object below the Lagoon as presented. This means you have the 'Sagittarius Triplet.'

For mosaics Registar is a godsend. Quite expensive but fast and infallible on registration. I made an exciting discovery regarding its use yesterday. This will be very helpful on multi panel projects. http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/219425-mosaic-buffs-might-like-this/

Olly

[SnakeyJ]

Hats off Stuart, that's a huge swathe of heaven and glorious detail for the amount of data. Nicely stiched together

typed on my mobile with Tapatalk

[StuartJPP]

Many thanks again for commenting everyone...

Gav, keep at it in Photoshop...Registar at $149 is a bit too much for me for the amount of use it will get. However if it will get use then it will probably be worth it.