14 degrees of Monoceros in Ha

[Adreneline]

I couldn't resist having a go at another mega-mosaic.

I had already imaged the Cone, the Rosette and, thanks to @Kinch,Sh2-284 so I filled in the gaps (nearly) over five nights in total and stitched it altogether in APP. I've done my best to make it seamless but it was very difficult dealing with the range of gradients across so many nights at such differing elevations above my most light polluted horizon. I think I am right in saying that 'Up' (North) is to the left; the image should be rotated 90 degrees clockwise.

All imaged with a Canon 200mm + ASI1600 - all unguided on iOptron CEM25-EC. All 180s except the Rosette which is 120s; in total there is just over two hours of total exposure time in the image.

I'd like to add OIII to all of this but with the weather in the UK that's unlikely to be this year!

Apologies for the large (megabytes) image; I was going to post the png until I noticed it was 220MB!

Thanks for looking.

Adrian

[tooth_dr]

I'm always blown away by these big mosaics.  That is indeed a fine piece of work Adrian.

[AbsolutelyN]

Wow ... amazing image, that must have taken a bit of doing! 

[Tommohawk]

Yes that's lovely - shame about the missing slice "below" the Rosette. I'm amazed you got that lot done in 2 hours of imaging! 

I'm also using APP now but havent done any mosaics yet - looks like it does the business.

Have you looked at NINA? It seem good for mosaics as it sorts the framing for you ... not tried it myself but heard some good things

[Adreneline]

1 hour ago, tooth_dr said:

That is indeed a fine piece of work Adrian.

Thank you Adam. I like seeing these targets in relation to one another and I also like to be able to compare relative sizes of lesser know objects with the well known ones. I'd love to get some OIII for each region, especially Sh2-284 but the weather is so unpredictable that I can't see getting 2 hours plus for the weak OIII components.

This is the region covered - I was amazed Astrometry.net managed to plate solve it!

1 hour ago, AbsolutelyN said:

Wow ... amazing image, that must have taken a bit of doing! 

Thank you Tristan. It helps using an f2.8 lens - it's like using the Samyang with slightly better resolution - it hoovers up photons pretty well.

 

34 minutes ago, Tommohawk said:

Yes that's lovely - shame about the missing slice "below" the Rosette.

Thank you Tom. I might have the missing slice imaged with another lens but I was hoping to do the whole thing with the 200mm; it is a bit annoying that I miscalculated but maybe I'll be lucky and get a chance to go back and fill in a few of the gaps.

I've not looked at NINA - I've got enough for my old brain with PI and APP. For this image I pre-processed and integrated each of the five images in APP. I then took each frame into PI and did a dynamic crop to get rid of the edge effects (and create the missing slice it would seem!) followed by ABE to remove the gradients. All five frames then went back into APP to assemble the mosaic. The Cone and the adjoining image needed to be flipped in PI before I could persuade APP to create the mosaic (they were both imaged after the region had passed the meridian).

Thank you again for all the kind comments.

Adrian

 

Edited January 22, 2020 by Adreneline
Typo

[tooth_dr]

7 minutes ago, Adreneline said:

I've got enough for my old brain with PI and APP. For this image I pre-processed and integrated each of the five images in APP. I then took each frame into PI and did a dynamic crop to get rid of the edge effects (and create the missing slice it would seem!) followed by ABE to remove the gradients. All five frames then went back into APP to assemble the mosaic. The Cone and the adjoining image needed to be flipped in PI before I could persuade APP to create the mosaic (they were both imaged after the region had passed the meridian).

Thank you again for all the kind comments.

Adrian

 

If I'm doing a mosaic, I let APP do all the work, I don't process separately and then assemble.  Tick the MBB box and see if that helps.  If you increase the levels of normalisation it might help to remove joins.

[Adreneline]

4 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

If I'm doing a mosaic, I let APP do all the work

Hi Adam. That is what I've done in the past - thrown the whole lot into APP and out pops the end result. This time I just could not get it to work despite making adjustment to Analyse Stars and Normalisation. It seemed to really struggle with the flipped images. I even left it over night and it was getting no where. It was at that stage I decided to process each frame separately. From left to right I could get frames 1 and 2 to merge and frames 3, 4 and 5 to merge but not the two halves together. I think processing separately and applying ABE in PI on each frame made a better job of handling the gradients.

Adrian

[tooth_dr]

13 minutes ago, Adreneline said:

Hi Adam. That is what I've done in the past - thrown the whole lot into APP and out pops the end result. This time I just could not get it to work despite making adjustment to Analyse Stars and Normalisation. It seemed to really struggle with the flipped images. I even left it over night and it was getting no where. It was at that stage I decided to process each frame separately. From left to right I could get frames 1 and 2 to merge and frames 3, 4 and 5 to merge but not the two halves together. I think processing separately and applying ABE in PI on each frame made a better job of handling the gradients.

Adrian

I find I have to run 'normal' normalisation in mosaic mode of it doesn't work, some error comes up.  I recently built a PC specifically for processing, to the best I could afford to put into it, after chatting to Mabula about spec.  It does a good job.  My previous processing computer was a laptop and it often took hours, where now it takes minutes.  How much overlap do you have?

 

Edited January 22, 2020 by tooth_dr

[Adreneline]

3 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

How much overlap do you have?

The overlap on each adjoining frame is around 40-50% so I thought APP would do it easily. This was the first time I had used images taken on opposite sides of the meridian so I automatically assumed that was the problem. I might experiment a bit more to see if I can get it to work. I use a Lenovo laptop, a MacBook Pro or a 9 year old iMac - they all seem to work at pretty much the same speed when pre-processing and integrating images in APP or PI. I always post process on the MBP or the iMac just because the screen is so much better.

Adrian

[tooth_dr]

12 minutes ago, Adreneline said:

The overlap on each adjoining frame is around 40-50% so I thought APP would do it easily. This was the first time I had used images taken on opposite sides of the meridian so I automatically assumed that was the problem. I might experiment a bit more to see if I can get it to work. I use a Lenovo laptop, a MacBook Pro or a 9 year old iMac - they all seem to work at pretty much the same speed when pre-processing and integrating images in APP or PI. I always post process on the MBP or the iMac just because the screen is so much better.

Adrian

I  have joined down to 12% including meridian flips, I only started doing mosaics in the past few weeks so this info is still fresh in my mind.   Anyway I'll not derail the thread, it's a spectacular image as it sits!

[Adreneline]

9 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

I'll not derail the thread

Not at all - it's all relevant and appreciated by me.

Thanks again.

Adrian

[groberts]

Fabulous mosaic Adrian - just love these widefield images.   

[MarkAR]

Fantastic project, here's to clear skies in the future so you can add to it.