First mosaic

[don4l]

Back in the summer I gathered about 30 hours of data in Cygnus with a view to producing a fantastic colour mosaic.  Little did I know that photographing the inside of a sphere was not quite as simple as it looked!  It all overlaps nicely, but I am really struggling with  gradients, and different star sizes - which really stand out!!!

 

Anyway, I have tried something simpler to get started.  So here is my first attempt at a mosaic.

 

STL6303, FSQ106ED at F3.6 on an EQ6.  Two frames, Left 95m, right 145m.  The right hand side was taken with a new Chroma Ha filter, and it doesn't have halos.

Processing was done in CCDStack and Picture window Pro.  Combining and alignment was done with the Gimp.

 

Apart from the halos, I hope that the join isn't visible.

 

Any advice welcomed.

 

Also shown is a CdC screenshot of the area.

 

 

 

[MarsG76]

Looks great.... well done.

 

[Demonperformer]

Very nice. And if anyone doubted the value of a chroma filter ...

[don4l]

11 hours ago, Demonperformer said:

Very nice. And if anyone doubted the value of a chroma filter ...

Thank you.

It's a bit early to reach a proper conclusion about the filter just yet.  I can already say that it is really good at not producing halos.  However, to do a proper test I need to do some 10 minute exposures.  My autoguiding is a bit wonky at the moment, so I am limited to 5 minute subs.

Overall, there is a lot less signal, but there is even less "noise".  My camera has fairly high "read noise" - so at the moment I think that my overall exposure time is the same.

 

Focusing is taking much longer because the focus star requires 2 or three times the exposure length.

 

When I get some longer exposures done, I will be in a position to comment properly.  I also need to see how it performs at F5, as I am imaging at F3.6 at the moment.  There are some reports that there is a frequency shift fast ratios.  If this is true, then it will be well worth every penny.