Cepheus Mosaic

[SteveNickolls]

Since May I have been imaging around the constellation of Cepheus to capture some of the many Sharpless objects and dark dust areas there with my modified Canon DSLR, and my Star Adventurer mount and CG-5 mount. Two clear nights in the past week finally allowed the completion of the project, a 7-pane mosaic stretching from the nebulosity near Mu Cepheii to NGC 7822.

To Stephen O’Meara the visual association of IC 1396 and open cluster Trumpler 37 close by Mu Cepheii resembled, “... a large blossoming flower in a moonlit garden covered in frost.” (page 521 of ‘Hidden Treasures’). How very apt. By combining several other Ha images and capturing a wider area reveals not just this flower but the stem, leaves and roots as if rendered in an impressionist painting of over 19 degrees of night sky.

Each pane of the mosaic comprised two hours worth of 300 second individual exposures at ISO 400 taken with the modified Canon 700D DSLR, 12nm clip-in Astronomik Ha filter and 135mm Samyang lens at f/2. The light frames were stacked with temperature matching dark frames and with master flat and bias frames from my library. Stacking was done using Deep Sky Stacker and the image further processed with StarTools. Microsoft ICE was then used to stitch the panes together. I also post an image with tones inverted which personally think emphasises the plant analogy best.

I hope some members like the mosaic images of the area. 

Cheers,
Steve

[wimvb]

35 minutes ago, SteveNickolls said:

 

I hope some members like the mosaic images of the area. 

I do. And an excellent write up. Thanks for sharing.

[Scooot]

That’s a fantastic image Steve, so much effort, it must be very satisfying to complete. The flower is very visible and so much detail when zooming in. If you rotate the bottom pane it looks like the head of a man wearing glasses to me. 

 

[SteveNickolls]

44 minutes ago, Scooot said:

If you rotate the bottom pane it looks like the head of a man wearing glasses to me. 

Hi Scooot, thanks for your kind comment. I could have planned the panes better if I did it all again but quite like the zig-zag flavour of the mosaic. I think I'm going to add a few more panes to the whole as clear night's allow. Regarding NGC 7822 I've had it sitting on the pc as desktop wallpaper and keep imagining it as a chimpanzee's head he, he. 

Best Regards,
Steve

[The Admiral]

I like that Steve. It's certainly an area full of gas, more the look of a "Triffid" than a flower . As you say, a few more panes, a bit to the top and to the left, will reveal yet more.

Ian

[SteveNickolls]

2 hours ago, The Admiral said:

a few more panes, a bit to the top and to the left, will reveal yet more.

Thanks Ian, yes it's good to have a future imaging plan in mind. ?

Best Regards,
Steve

[happy-kat]

I like the inverted mosaic image.  When using ICE my own experience is I've needed to crop bin develop wipe then save and use those for ICE and then further process the mosaic. I haven't had much luck in using ICE on finished processed images.

[SteveNickolls]

2 hours ago, happy-kat said:

I like the inverted mosaic image.

Hi and thanks happy-kat. I'm intrigued at your processing steps as I've not used ICE very much and will have a go-thanks a lot for that idea.  ? My own process has been a little different in ST's being-CROP (usually 50 pixels off each edge), WIPE, DEVELOP, CONTRAST and LIFE, then I stop tracking and save. I've been using a jpeg of the saved file in ICE. I was intending to re-process the images from the Cepheus imaging to try and get sky background more uniform as one night was particularly poorer in terms of conditions and it showed in the processing in ST's. Your process may well make a massive improvement in this regard-so thanks in anticipation. ? ICE does seem to need some significant feature common in both panes to allow them to be connected.

Best Regards,
Steve

[happy-kat]

I'll look at my mosaic from last year as I put the steps in there to confirm exactly what I'd done, if I used Life then ICE wouldn't stitch then together so I had to break the processing in half.

[SteveNickolls]

54 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

if I used Life then ICE wouldn't stitch then together so I had to break the processing in half

That's very interesting to know happy-kat. I'll certainly look forward to seeing your process steps from last year. I'll also give your process a go and see if it changes the outcome in MS ICE.

Best Regards,
Steve

[happy-kat]

Reading my notes in the process folder and checking the log files I found that I first (on autosave fits file standard startools DSS stack):

manual develop | crop | bin 50% | wipe | manual develop | contrast

save

stitch ICE

mask stars shrink grow grow grow invert | life | contrast | life | may have done a colour and denoise here

[SteveNickolls]

Thanks happy-kat, I will have a go with these settings and see how things turn out. Will let you know. ? 

Cheers,
Steve

[happy-kat]

I like the isolate preset, the inverted star mask helped with not getting halos.