Cygnus Mosaic in SHO - 27 hrs

[Xiga]

1 hour ago, tooth_dr said:

Really really nice job Ciarán. You had been awfully quiet for a while there so I knew something spectacular was on the cards  🤪

A great idea using the 50mm lens to do one large single panel in oiii and Sii and get the detail in 9 panels in Ha.  I’ve imaged a few areas in Cygnus with my QHY9/180mm lens/ha and there is just so much going on in every frame. 
 

Thanks Adam. The original plan was only to capture 60 mins for each Ha panel, with the goal being to aim for an achievable amount of total exposure (by my own modest standards) so i could actually produce a finished image this season. Once or twice i made a start on processing it, only for another clear night to present itself, so i kept going at it until the weather turned. I'm really glad i did now, having almost twice the Ha data per panel made a huge difference in the end. 

I have to say i really like the simplicity of this kind of imaging. I am able to just carry the whole rig down from the Attic, fully assembled, and be up and running in not much more than 30 mins. That's a lot quicker than with the 80ED, which i keep packed away. Another thing that really surprised me, imaging at this scale (8.4") once i polar align, i am actually able to just restore the previous calibration in Phd2 and not bother with re-calibrating. I would never have imagined that was possible, only i tried it one night when i was in a hurry to catch a quick hour between the clouds, and the guide graph was no different, always somewhere between 0.75" and 1.25" depending on the seeing. I kept this up for about 6 of the 9 sessions and it was always the same, so that was a nice surprise. 

13 minutes ago, mackiedlm said:

that is outstanding - just fabulous.

Thanks mackiedlm 🙂

[tooth_dr]

Keeping your Atik in the attic 🤪😂

[Xiga]

5 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

Keeping your Atik in the attic 🤪😂

Indeed 😂 

Off-topic - i've been thinking of getting a 3.5nm Baader Ha filter, but in 1.25" size. I've been using 2" filters up to now. Do you think i could get away with a 1.25" one with this setup? Whether i'd be using the lens or the 80ED, the T2 filter drawer would always be directly connected to the Atik, so it might be ok i think? 🤔

[tooth_dr]

4 minutes ago, Xiga said:

Off-topic - i've been thinking of getting a 3.5nm Baader Ha filter, but in 1.25" size. I've been using 2" filters up to now. Do you think i could get away with a 1.25" one with this setup? Whether i'd be using the lens or the 80ED, the T2 filter drawer would always be directly connected to the Atik, so it might be ok i think?

I have used 1.25" Baader filters in an Atik EFW2 with the 383L+ on my SW 250px which is F4.7 - and vignetting corrects ok with flats.  I havent tried 1.25" with my Tak, but the 2" vignette enough to tell me that it wont work.

[souls33k3r]

53 minutes ago, Xiga said:

Thanks Dave and Ahmed for confirming. Just my geriatric phone to blame then! 😜

Ahmed, it's a prime lens, not a zoom one. Specifically it's a Tamron 135mm F2.8 Adaptall II lens. Being an Adaptall lens, you can attach different mounts, so to attach it to my optical train i picked up an M42 mount for it, plus another adapter known as a 'Russian Adapter', which converts from M42 to T2. You can see the full optical train below. 

I only found out after i got mine, but there is a supposedly better version out there. I think it's the SMC F2.5 version, so maybe look at that one instead. The one i have needs stopped down to be useable. The CA is way less in NB than in broadband though. I was using step-down rings as well, to avoid diffraction spikes, and for this the sweet spot seemed to be using a 30mm step-down ring (~F4.5) coupled with moving the aperture blade one half-stop between F2.8 and F4. I haven't tried it properly for broadband imaging, but i suspect i will need to close the aperture blades to F4 at best. 

Cheers for the brilliant explanation Ciarán which now makes complete sense. SMC Pentax lens, here me come!!! on a serious note, this looks super fantastic mate. The only thing I'm wondering is whether these such wide lenses are any good in Bortle 8/9 skies that I live in but I guess that's me distracting the topic away from the absolutely stonking image that you've produced which I wouldn't want

[ollypenrice]

Since Yves and I posted a mosaic heading the other way from the NAN I thought it would be interesting to see what it would look like combined with Ciaran's. Ours was OSC so this is the greyscale, posted with Ciaran's permission. I didn't try to adjust the field curvatures so there is some distortion, but this is a lot of sky!

 

Olly

[ultranova]

Worth every minute you dedicated to it,

Absolutely stunning,

well done

Paul

[Xiga]

1 hour ago, ultranova said:

Worth every minute you dedicated to it,

Absolutely stunning,

well done

Paul

Thanks Paul. I'm more used to dealing with 2.7 hrs of data, rather than 27! This was easily the most I've ever put into an image so far.

[John]

I'm not an imager but that is an astonishing image of a part of the sky that I love to observe so thanks so much for all the effort you have put into this and for sharing it here

 

[steppenwolf]

This is a really stunningly beautiful image, Ciarán - well done! Such a magnificently wide field of view of such a busy region of our Summer sky.

[Mr Spock]

*speechless*

That is an incredible image. 

[Xiga]

12 hours ago, tooth_dr said:

I have used 1.25" Baader filters in an Atik EFW2 with the 383L+ on my SW 250px which is F4.7 - and vignetting corrects ok with flats.  I havent tried 1.25" with my Tak, but the 2" vignette enough to tell me that it wont work.

Thanks Adam. At F6.3 and F4.5 i might be ok then. Hmm....

[Xiga]

4 hours ago, John said:

I'm not an imager but that is an astonishing image of a part of the sky that I love to observe so thanks so much for all the effort you have put into this and for sharing it here

 

Many thanks John. Alas, i have hardly put an eyepiece in the telescope since i took up imaging some 4 years ago. I really should get back to doing some observing. 

3 hours ago, steppenwolf said:

This is a really stunningly beautiful image, Ciarán - well done! Such a magnificently wide field of view of such a busy region of our Summer sky.

Thank you Steve! Hard to believe it was 4 years ago now that your first book got me started on this journey. 

3 hours ago, Mr Spock said:

*speechless*

That is an incredible image. 

Thanks Spock!

[symmetal]

Excellent Image. Well planned and executed to capture all those targets in one picture. On the scaled down preview image the Crescent Nebula looks like a 1950s UFO. 😀

Alan

[Ant]

Damn, that's a nice image! 

Well done!!

[Xiga]

10 hours ago, symmetal said:

Excellent Image. Well planned and executed to capture all those targets in one picture. On the scaled down preview image the Crescent Nebula looks like a 1950s UFO. 😀

Alan

Thanks Alan! 🛸

4 hours ago, Ant said:

Damn, that's a nice image! 

Well done!!

Cheers Ant!

[John Nodding]

Ooh matron! 👀👍🏻
 

Noddy

[Allinthehead]

Wonderful mosaic, looks seamless. Working on one myself at moment, they're a bit of a slog but well worth the effort.

[x6gas]

Bit late to the party but just to add my appreciation of this terrific image, Ciarán.

Loving Olly's mash up too - what a wonderful part of the sky...

Great stuff...

[Xiga]

16 hours ago, John Nodding said:

Ooh matron! 👀👍🏻
 

Noddy

Thanks Noddy. That made me laugh i have to say 😁

12 hours ago, Allinthehead said:

Wonderful mosaic, looks seamless. Working on one myself at moment, they're a bit of a slog but well worth the effort.

Thanks Richard. APP really is amazing for doing mosaics. I know you use it to, so i can't wait to see what you have in store for us. FWIW, i used LNC settings of 2 Degrees and 10 Iterations for this one. 

8 hours ago, x6gas said:

Bit late to the party but just to add my appreciation of this terrific image, Ciarán.

Loving Olly's mash up too - what a wonderful part of the sky...

Great stuff...

Thanks Ian 😀

[Xiga]

Been meaning to do a starless Ha version of this, and finally got around to doing it tonight. Starnet really is amazing i must say. It takes all the work fun out of it! 😋

Very little processing on this. Just a Levels adjustment followed by a bit of NR in the darker areas. At only 108 mins per panel, it's still quite noisy, so i downscaled it to 50%. 

Edited October 11, 2020 by Xiga

[tomato]

This is awesome, between you and Olly you should attempt the  entire Northern Milky Way!

[newbie alert]

Wow,  that's just stunning... massive project to put yourself into, and that's a superb reward.. nice job well done

[ollypenrice]

12 hours ago, Xiga said:

Been meaning to do a starless Ha version of this, and finally got around to doing it tonight. Starnet really is amazing i must say. It takes all the work fun out of it! 😋

Very little processing on this. Just a Levels adjustment followed by a bit of NR in the darker areas. At only 108 mins per panel, it's still quite noisy, so i downscaled it to 50%. 

Wow, that's gorgeous. Removing the stars gives a more three dimensional look so that now the Veil is just 'hanging there' and looking very spherical.

Olly