Heart and Soul - 54Hour 6 Panel Mosaic

[WolfieGlos]

The Soul nebula I have imaged previously, in fact it was the second one I imaged with a modded DSLR. A year later, my effort I feel is significantly better, with a better scope, mount, triband filter and better processing.

The Heart, on the other hand, has been a bit of a bogey target for me. In my previous 3 attempts, it was out of focus, partially cut off and finally ruined by poor tracking and high winds. All of those were with an un-modded camera when learning AP with a zoom lens, so this year I was determined to get it.

With my 102ED it needed a 2 panel mosaic, which led me onto including the Soul.....for a 6 panel mosaic. I've previously done a few 2x1 mosaic's, but a 3x2 was a bigger challenge. Using NINA's framing assistant, this was actually really easy to set up, save, and run over multiple nights. When I started this in September, we were predicted 3 clear nights running with No Moon so I thought this should be do-able. In reality, I gathered 6 hours on the Soul, and half of the Heart on 2 of those 3 nights. Since then, clouds have really scuppered my efforts, with the odd spell being put to use but some extended cloud free nights this last week I've finally got to a stage where I think I'm finished.

By far my biggest project to date, this has been a big learning experience and I've had a few trials and lessons with mosaic imaging. I'm not sure I'll do such a large one again but we'll see. Individual images below are cropped down from the larger mosiac after all processing.

Anyway, details and images as below:

Canon EOS 800Da + Starfield 102ED + HEQ5
ISO - 400
Frames - 
Panel 1 = 90 x 360s (leNhance Filter) = 09:00 hours
Panel 2 = 93 x 360s (leNhance Filter) = 09:18 hours (Fish-head Neb)
Panel 3 = 90 x 360s (leNhance Filter) = 09:00 hours
Panel 4 = 90 x 360s (leNhance Filter) = 09:00 hours (Heart Neb)
Panel 5 = 90 x 360s (leNhance Filter) = 09:00 hours (Soul Neb)
Panel 6 = 91 x 360s (leNhance Filter) = 09:06 hours
TOTAL TIME: 54:24:00
Calibrations - 50 bias, 35 flats per panel.
Individual panels stacked in SIRIL
Mosaic Combined in ASTAP
Mosaic edited in SIRIL, Starnet, TopazDeNoise AI and GIMP

 

Hope you like, comments and criticism welcome🙂

[Roy Foreman]

These two targets are on my to-do list, though I doubt I'll clock up as many hours as you have done.  Quite impressive and an excellent image.

[Ouroboros]

Absolutely superb. The detail is fantastic. I take my hat off to your dedication and perseverance. 

[AstroNebulee]

Love it! What an amazing achievement, patience and dedication. 

One for your wall I should hope. 

Lee 

[bomberbaz]

5 hours ago, WolfieGlos said:

The Soul nebula I have imaged previously, in fact it was the second one I imaged with a modded DSLR. A year later, my effort I feel is significantly better, with a better scope, mount, triband filter and better processing.

The Heart, on the other hand, has been a bit of a bogey target for me. In my previous 3 attempts, it was out of focus, partially cut off and finally ruined by poor tracking and high winds. All of those were with an un-modded camera when learning AP with a zoom lens, so this year I was determined to get it.

With my 102ED it needed a 2 panel mosaic, which led me onto including the Soul.....for a 6 panel mosaic. I've previously done a few 2x1 mosaic's, but a 3x2 was a bigger challenge. Using NINA's framing assistant, this was actually really easy to set up, save, and run over multiple nights. When I started this in September, we were predicted 3 clear nights running with No Moon so I thought this should be do-able. In reality, I gathered 6 hours on the Soul, and half of the Heart on 2 of those 3 nights. Since then, clouds have really scuppered my efforts, with the odd spell being put to use but some extended cloud free nights this last week I've finally got to a stage where I think I'm finished.

By far my biggest project to date, this has been a big learning experience and I've had a few trials and lessons with mosaic imaging. I'm not sure I'll do such a large one again but we'll see. Individual images below are cropped down from the larger mosiac after all processing.

Anyway, details and images as below:

Canon EOS 800Da + Starfield 102ED + HEQ5
ISO - 400
Frames - 
Panel 1 = 90 x 360s (leNhance Filter) = 09:00 hours
Panel 2 = 93 x 360s (leNhance Filter) = 09:18 hours (Fish-head Neb)
Panel 3 = 90 x 360s (leNhance Filter) = 09:00 hours
Panel 4 = 90 x 360s (leNhance Filter) = 09:00 hours (Heart Neb)
Panel 5 = 90 x 360s (leNhance Filter) = 09:00 hours (Soul Neb)
Panel 6 = 91 x 360s (leNhance Filter) = 09:06 hours
TOTAL TIME: 54:24:00
Calibrations - 50 bias, 35 flats per panel.
Individual panels stacked in SIRIL
Mosaic Combined in ASTAP
Mosaic edited in SIRIL, Starnet, TopazDeNoise AI and GIMP

 

Hope you like, comments and criticism welcome🙂

That is quite beautiful and a real testament to your endeavours.

When using siril, did you use a set script to stack so as to ensure continuity?

[WolfieGlos]

1 hour ago, Roy Foreman said:

These two targets are on my to-do list, though I doubt I'll clock up as many hours as you have done.  Quite impressive and an excellent image.

Thanks Roy! I posted in your topic knowing full well what time I had on this one 🤣 It’s been nearly 8 weeks getting all of this data so I’m glad it’s finished in many respects haha.

1 hour ago, Ouroboros said:

Absolutely superb. The detail is fantastic. I take my hat off to your dedication and perseverance. 

Thanks for the kind words Ouroboros! I ran a process when I had about 5 hours per panel, but I wanted more detail, I never thought I’d end up with this amount of time.

58 minutes ago, AstroNebulee said:

Love it! What an amazing achievement, patience and dedication. 

One for your wall I should hope. 

Lee 

Thank you Lee! I’ve yet to print any of my images, this might be the first though now you mention it. I’m in work tomorrow and we have A1 plotters….so if I can get the boss out of the office for a few minutes I can use all of our black and red ink on this one 🤣

43 minutes ago, bomberbaz said:

That is quite beautiful and a real testament to your endeavours.

When using siril, did you use a set script to stack so as to ensure continuity?

Thanks Steve!

For stacking, I stacked each night (and panel) individually. Then I “stacked the stacks” - so one panel I imaged over only 3 nights, whereas others I have up to 5 nights on some.

Once I had the final stack of each panel, I cropped and ran a background extraction on each, along with a plate solve (not photometric colour calibration). This ensured each panel was the same, and they were then stitched in ASTAP. ASTAP seemed to apply some form of stretching, since the colour balance would change. This left me with a full image, which I then ran starnet on and processed to suit. This gave me continuity.

What I really struggled with was brightness between each panels. The Soul had a 6 hour session on a Moon free night in September; most of the other panels were Moon affected to some degree, including the final 3 on the Soul. It’s something that seems obvious but I didn’t appreciate to begin with, so after that I would run each panel for about 1 hour a night so the brightness difference wasn’t so bad. That’s a lesson learnt! 

[Richard_]

A fantastic image with lovely detail when zooming in and panning about. Well done! I've only ever used ASTAP for tilt analysis and plate solving, curious to hear how easy/difficult it was to stitch a mosaic together using this software. 

[WolfieGlos]

52 minutes ago, Richard_ said:

A fantastic image with lovely detail when zooming in and panning about. Well done! I've only ever used ASTAP for tilt analysis and plate solving, curious to hear how easy/difficult it was to stitch a mosaic together using this software. 

Thank you Richard! 

Like you, I used it for tilt checking only but I've now used ASTAP a few times for stacking, and a few times for mosaic's. It is actually quite easy; insert your stacked panels as fits or tifs in the lights tab, go to the "Stack Method" tab and choose "Image Stitching Mode". There's hardly any options left then, just look at the merge background (try it with and without) and simply hit "Stack"!

I did encounter a few times where it couldn't plate solve some of the panels, but to get around that, I plate solved in Siril which saves it to the Fits header...which ASTAP then reads in, and it worked every time. It's surprisingly easy. My main issue was a lack of computer power, it took about 1.5 hours to stitch the 6 panel mosaic. It doesn't seem to be a piece of software used by a lot of people for stacking, so good luck if you intend to try it. I can try and give more detailed help if you encounter any problems 🙂

Edited November 13, 2023 by WolfieGlos

[WolfieGlos]

For all the data I gathered, I thought I would have a play with the data to see what else I could do.

I decided to have a play with Siril's pixel math, and came up with a Hubble-type colour palette. I overlaid the original RGB stars and I quite like this result. I might try a HOO on another night.

[alan potts]

Utterly brilliant well done.

Alan

[WolfieGlos]

16 hours ago, alan potts said:

Utterly brilliant well done.

Alan

Thank you Alan!