Flaming Tadpoles - IC405 and IC410 2-Pane Narrowband Mosaic

[eshy76]

Hi everyone!

The Tadpole Nebula and the Flaming Star Nebula captured over three nights of the unexpected nice weather we had a couple of weeks ago.

A number of firsts with this image:

1. My first mosaic - keeping it simple with two panes!
2. First time I left my imaging rig outside... (I used a telegizmo cover) and it was perfect, allowing me to get imaging very quickly on each night
3. First time using powerful scripting tools in my capture software, APT, to move to the second pane and starting imaging automatically...worked really well!

APP was used for pre-processing and stitching the mosaic together, while Pixinsight was used for image processing. A total of 10.9 hours integration time.

Full details on Astrobin

Thanks for looking!

[groberts]

Congratulations + especially on achieving your various firsts, always a memorable moment with astrophotgraphy + very good result .  I've also got loads of data from the recent weather bonus but my computer's been down for 10-days and is awaiting processing - fingers crossed.

Subject to clear skies again, I'm also hoping to attempt a mosaic some time soon for the first time and as a fellow user of APT would be interested if you could provide any advice on how to do this in APT + point me towards any useful information / instructions?   

Thanks, Graham

 

 

   

[teoria_del_big_bang]

That is a superb image, loads of detail and not over processed , well done.

Steve

[eshy76]

2 hours ago, groberts said:

Congratulations + especially on achieving your various firsts, always a memorable moment with astrophotgraphy + very good result .  I've also got loads of data from the recent weather bonus but my computer's been down for 10-days and is awaiting processing - fingers crossed.

Subject to clear skies again, I'm also hoping to attempt a mosaic some time soon for the first time and as a fellow user of APT would be interested if you could provide any advice on how to do this in APT + point me towards any useful information / instructions?   

Thanks, Graham

 

 

   

Hi Graham,

Thank you for the kind words!

In terms of tips and tricks, this was my broad approach for this mosaic:

1. I used dso-browser.com to plan the mosaic - you can enter your optics and it shows your field of view for any object and you can easily add mosaic panes. You can also view the coordinates for the centre of each pane - but be careful, the correct coordinates did not appear correctly on the mobile version for me, but did on the iPad/desktop version of the site. 

2. Plug in the coordinates to APT's Pointcraft Go++ for each pane and you should be good to go - of course pay attention to your orientation. Also observe the first few frames to make sure you're pointed right - in mine above, the first few shots of pane 2 were slightly too far left (West?), so I used the Aim function in Pointcraft to choose the desired centre spot for the second pane - the central large stars were common to both panes so I knew there was some overlap there. Finally, when you are happy that APT has dialled in the right coordinates for each pane, "Store" them as custom objects from Pointcraft - crucial if you want to add data at later dates as you can select them directly for platesolving.

3. In terms of pre-processing and stacking, I first stacked each pane by filter separately (including flats, darks, dark flats), so Ha pane 1, Ha pane 2, OIII pane 1...etc. I then used the excellent APP to stitch the mosaic together for each filter, so Ha pane 1 + Ha pane 2, etc, so I ended up with three mosaics. Finally I moved all 3 images to Pixinsight, registered them and cropped all 3 using dynamic crop.

After that it's process to taste!

I hope this sheds some light - of course I'm sure other tools can be used for the things I've mentioned and SGP has the mosaic planner built in...but I like APT!

[eshy76]

1 hour ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

That is a superb image, loads of detail and not over processed , well done.

Steve

Thank you for the kind words - I consciously went for a lighter touch on this project!

[groberts]

Many thanks eshy76  for your guidance and comments on mosaics, which I need to read - think about - and may come back with more questions.  

After much deliberation I finally cracked plate solving last year and naturally now want to try my hand at mosaics to open up more potential.  I have but have not used SGP and am drawn to their mosaics function but like you I've really enjoyed APT which I've got quite used to and would like to stick with; hopefully Yoddah has something for mosaics in the pipeline.

Graham

[Barry-Wilson]

Congratulations on your first mosaic - I’m afraid they can become addictive ?.

Lovely vibrant image and very well framed. Well done ?.

[eshy76]

25 minutes ago, Barry-Wilson said:

Congratulations on your first mosaic - I’m afraid they can become addictive ?.

Lovely vibrant image and very well framed. Well done ?.

Thanks Barry! Yep, as if this hobby wasn't challenging enough, why not go for mosaics?! 

I love your images, so your comments mean a lot!

[eshy76]

On 10/03/2019 at 14:34, groberts said:

Many thanks eshy76  for your guidance and comments on mosaics, which I need to read - think about - and may come back with more questions.  

After much deliberation I finally cracked plate solving last year and naturally now want to try my hand at mosaics to open up more potential.  I have but have not used SGP and am drawn to their mosaics function but like you I've really enjoyed APT which I've got quite used to and would like to stick with; hopefully Yoddah has something for mosaics in the pipeline.

Graham

Hi Graham - if you've cracked platesolving that helps a lot - I think lining things up is half the battle with mosaics! 

Some of my comments were after some trial and error, so hopefully you can benefit from that. I think mosaics are one of those things that make sense once you attempt one - common sense will get you there! Just ensure there's some overlap of at least 10% between the panes and the software should be able to figure it out!

Happy to answer any more questions, including with APT - I really like Ivo (Yoddha) - he's helped me a lot and I know a mosaic planner is on his list of updates, now that the auto meridian flip has been added!

[x6gas]

Lovely image.