First APP Mosaic - I'm impressed!

[Adreneline]

I've been imaging the Heart & Soul over the past few/several weeks as and when there have been breaks in the eternal clouds.

I am not fortunate to have a permanent setup so every session requires getting everything outside, setup, aligned and on target with all the variability that entails.

I am also not as diligent as I should be about ensuring I am smack on target each time; I've lost too many hours of clear sky to plate solving so rely on comparing past images with tonights snapshot.

This is 34x10mins of Ha on the Heart and 29x10mins of Ha on the Soul - so over 10 hours - (I have an equivalent amount of OIII and slightly less SII as well) - all taken with Samyang 135mm + Atik 428ex on an NEQ6 Pro.

Having spent what seems like 10 hours trying to stitch this lot together in PI with only a modicum of success I decided to invest in an APP Renters Licence.

Voila! Just 45 minutes following @swag72 concise but excellent tutorial in the August Sky at Night Magazine produced this!

I took the APP integrated image into PI and applied MLT noise reduction and a multi-incremental stretch in HT.

As an image it certainly won't win any prizes but I am seriously impressed with how easy it was to achieve this end result in APP compared with PI.

I am sure it is possible to achieve an equivalent result in PI but I may not live long enough.

Adrian

[MarsG76]

Very nicely done... especially for a first.

[wornish]

Excellent capture.

I bought APP for the very same reason.  It makes processing mosaics so easy.

[tomato]

That’s a great mosaic, I am relieved to see I’m not the only one to post a mosaic without the corners filled in!☺️ APP certainly takes the pain out of the process, and has some powerful tools to neutralise varying backgrounds from images taken over a number of sessions.

[Adreneline]

29 minutes ago, tomato said:

That’s a great mosaic

Thank you.I don't see anything wrong with corners missing personally - as my wife says "you've seen one star, you've seen 'em all" and went on to suggest I fill in the corners by doing a bit of cut 'n pasting.

APP is very accessible for mosaics compared with PI; I've struggled so much with PI trying to obtain even backgrounds and invisible seams - it puts you off attempting a mosaic in the first place!

I've now integrated the 10 hours of OIII and done a little bit of cropping - still got some missing corners though

I've done a final bit of colour manipulation in PS.

[Hallingskies]

10 hours ago, Adreneline said:

 

I am sure it is possible to achieve an equivalent result in PI but I may not live long enough.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels that life is too short for PI.....?

[swag72]

That has gone together very well as a mosaic....... ?? I'm glad that the tutorial helped and made sense!!!! Like you, I agree that APP is excellent for mosaics and I believe is better all round than PI. If the results are the same (I have generally found them better) but the process is easier then that's a massive win in my book  

[carastro]

A great effort and result. 

Carolw

[Adreneline]

23 minutes ago, swag72 said:

That has gone together very well as a mosaic....... ??

Thank you Sara. I am sure that once I get to grips with APP the results may be even better but I am impressed that I can get a result like this relatively easily compared with PI. I like PI a lot for noise reduction and histogram stretching, and I find very careful use of HDRM useful in some (but not all) images. The PI batch processing script is derided by many but I find it generally works well. I compared the integration results of PI with APP using Image Analysis and it seemed to me (with my limited understanding of the figures) that PI was better but it was very marginal and not something I could detect visually at all.

APP seems like another great tool to have in the box of processing software - along with PI and PS!

Thanks again.

Adrian

[Tom OD]

Very good result there.

I was playing about in PI and APP for my latest mosaic. Only APP could stitch it effectively. I was very impressed with it.

Tom

[swag72]

56 minutes ago, Tom OD said:

Very good result there.

I was playing about in PI and APP for my latest mosaic. Only APP could stitch it effectively. I was very impressed with it.

Tom

I gave found a few mosaics where PI will not stitch them but APP does it perfectly ??

[MartinFransson]

Hmm, and here I was thinking I messed up when PI wouldn't process my mosaics. APP you say? ?

[Adreneline]

52 minutes ago, swag72 said:

I gave found a few mosaics where PI will not stitch them but APP does it perfectly ??

I think the thing that was most satisfying was I didn't actually plan this mosaic - it just evolved over time.

I think I might re-visit some of my earlier multi-session,  'nearly on target' efforts to see if APP can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear!

Adrian

[tomato]

Using APP I too have successfully stitched together an unplanned mosaic  of M31 using different scope configurations taken over a number of sessions, and after a bit of experimenting with the settings, got the backgrounds reasonably smoothed out. In other words, APP has dealt with pretty much everything I could throw at it mosaic wise, and still delivered.

[Adreneline]

2 hours ago, tomato said:

I too have successfully stitched together an unplanned mosaic  of M31

Impressive result!

Even if you only use APP for mosaics I still reckon it is worth the investment; anything that allows us to get more from our hard-fought data has got to be good.

I can now spend countless cloudy nights going back over previous data sets to see if I can get more out of them!

[tomato]

Totally agree, for calibration and combining data, APP takes some beating.

[MartinB]

Great result with the Samyang 135mm lens, who needs a telescope!?