January 17, 2015: BIG 47 and CRAZY 88 pane mosaic time in H-alpha

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Managed to catch a load of data today. I tried something new, with the hope of enhancing the wonderful proms. First  batch consisted of 47 panes (stacked with AS!2, sharpened in ImPP, stitched in AutoStitch64, tweaks in Gimp), at 15ms exposure time and gamma = 1.0 and 350 frames out of 500 stacked,

Grey:

Pseudo-colour:

Inverted pseudo-colour:

I then decided to catch another 41 panes at 25ms, gamma= 1.98, processed in much the same way, and combined with the first set of panes. I did change the gamma of the two sets with ImPP to match as near as possible, chucked all 88 panes in AutoStitch64, and got a nice combination of disk and prom detail:

Grey:

Pseudo-colour:

Inverted pseudo-colour:

New grey-scale scheme:

Pseudo-colour added:

I also tried to see what happened if I simply modified the gamma of the original 47 panes. This was good, but didn't show quite the prom detail of the 88 paner (yes, I know, I am crazy )

Grey:

Pseudo-colour:

Inverted pseudo-colour:

Rather pleased with the 88 paner (and the others too, really). All images taken with the little LS35THa, DMK21AU618 and TV 2.5x PowerMate

[Davey-T]

Super collection Michael, you seem to have too much time on your hands

Dave

[David Smith]

What Dave said. 88 panes

[dazzaa1966]

Fantanstic images Michael

[Floater]

Wow. Great detail!

[Pete Presland]

Some very nice filaments there.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Thanks guys, I improved the 88 paner slightly, it had a little banding in the southern hemisphere, which I have been able to reduce a tad (especially visible in the new colour scheme)

Grey:

Pseudo-colour:

Inverted:

Partly inverted:

Partly inverted pseudo-colour:

[JB80]

Stunning efforts Michael!

[Stardust]

great shots but I think i'd have lost the plot somewhere along the way with all those panes

[Chinapig]

Wow! A fab set of images. Well worth the pain of multipane.

Love that long-tailed lizard...

[Montana]

Wow!!! you get an A star for the images (I like the first of each set the best) and a triple A star for effort :)

Alexandra

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Thanks everybody. I could actually have grabbed the entire disk with some 30 panes per exposure time, but I got slightly side-tracked by people asking me what I was doing (I had set up the scope across the road from my house). I noticed some duplicate images, but just shoved the whole lot through the automated processing train. I should get a dual-axis drive upgrade with ST-4 port (no goto) so I might be able to automate acquisition of the mosaic as well. That should save some hassle.

[spaceboy]

WOW those are great

[sooot]

88 ha ha give us what your smoking. Great shots michael. Do you not get much surface movement ?

[Mark at Beaufort]

Michael those are fantastic images for a Lunt 35. I assume you were using your DMK camera. With that quality who needs to upgrade - excellent.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Michael those are fantastic images for a Lunt 35. I assume you were using your DMK camera. With that quality who needs to upgrade - excellent.

Thanks, Mark. Of course I want an upgrade. If I get a Quark for my 80mm scopes, and get a bigger chip camera, I could readily go to  16 or 17 megapixel mosaics

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

88 ha ha give us what your smoking. Great shots michael. Do you not get much surface movement ?

Thanks sooot. Yep, crazy it is. It took me about 12 minutes to get the first set of frames, and another 15 for second. That means about 15 minutes delay between the two disks, or about 0.25 deg rotation of the disk (max 3.5 pixels shift at this scale. Apparently, AutoStitch64 could handle it.