Heart Nebula - my first mosaic

[peonic]

This is my first attempt at a mosaic.

 

I was impressed with how easy NINA made the initial data acquisition. I was less impressed with my first attempts at stitching it all together! I had seen some tutorials that said that AstroPixelProcessor would pretty work automagically to stitch things together - but my experience led to a frustrating seam that I couldn't get rid off no matter what I tried.

 

I eventually found a tutorial for PixInsight's Photometric Mosaic script and this did a MUCH better job.

 

4 panel mosaic - each panel is 15x300s subs

Skywatcher ED80

HEQ5

533MC Pro

L-Enhance filter, Bortle 5 sky

 

I've processed this fairly simply - PCC, StarXterminator, NoiseXterminator, EZ SoftStretch, SNCR and then some curves adjustment.

 

Raw FITS attached if anyone wants to have a poke and see what they can get out - and as usual, given this is only my 6th image since getting back into imaging this year - any tips, tricks, pointers would be hugely appreciated.

 

Chris

Heart - IC1805 - ED80.533MC.LEnhance - UNPROCESSED.fit

[Richard_]

Both images look nice and clean Chris, nice work. The photometric mosaic tool in pixinsight is really impressive, and straight forward to use once you understand what's going on. I can't see any overlapping or change of gradients between panels. 

[peonic]

Had a bit of a play with both the FORAXX palette and doing this as a drizzle integration.

 

Not one for the purist I think, but I thought it ended up kinda pretty!

[Ratlet]

Absolutely fantastic.

I picked up a 533 sensor and was a bit concerned with the narrow fov but had considered doing mosaics but wasn't sure how it would turn out!  Next time I get out I'll need to give one a try.

[peonic]

Give it a shot, if you're using NINA it's surprisingly easy to setup.  Literally tell it how many panels you want, adjust the framing as required and off you go!

The files can end up getting quite big, however!

 

Chris 

[Ratlet]

20 minutes ago, peonic said:

Give it a shot, if you're using NINA it's surprisingly easy to setup.  Literally tell it how many panels you want, adjust the framing as required and off you go!

The files can end up getting quite big, however!

 

Chris 

I can see that.  I thought about downloading your data and saw the image size lol

[peonic]

You should see what happened when I used Drizzle....... 🙄

 

Perk of working in IT and having access to silly amounts of storage!