A 45 panel 100hr plus Samyang135ASi2600 mosaic of the Bottom of Cepheus and Most of Cygnus including Elephants Trunk, Flying Bat, Lion, Seahorse, ClamShell, North America, Pelican, Propellor, Butterfly, Crescent, Tulip and Veil.

[Laurin Dave]

As the title suggests this is a rather large mosaic which started in the fall of 2022 as a relatively small four panel one around NGC7000 and Sadr but which just grew and grew through 2023 and 2024 to date.    As presented it is composed of 45 panels of between 2 and 4 hours each taken with a Samyang135ASI2600mc (initially at f2.8 but this year after some tweaking at f2).  Around Sadr,  the Flying Bat and Elephants Trunk Ha from the same setup but with a duo band LExt filter has been blended in to enhance the structure, also within the Flying bat Oiii has been added to show the Squid and the Cocoon has been enhanced with some Hi Res data from my trip to Les Granges 5 years ago @ollypenrice. Apart from that it is purely colour.   Proccessing was to say the least a bit complicated with much trial and error.  My workflow evolved to this which seems to me to have been succesful in acheiving a reasonably seamless mosaic:   a) calibrate, cosmetic correct and register in Pixinsight,   b) run the subs through Normalise Scale Gradient,  by normalising every sub to "the best one" this helps keep the gradient in the final stack as simple as possible and easier to remove - very useful in my Bortle 4/5,  c) Stack the normailsed subs in Pixinsight,  d) crop the edges of the Stack,  e) Run Blur Exterminator to correct the corner stars, f) Remove the stars using Star Exterminator, g) remove the gradient from the Starless Image, h) Using Pixelmath subtract the gradient produced in Step "g)"  from the non Star Removed  Stack , h) Convert ak the Stacks to TIf or FITS format, i) Load the Stacks in to Astro Pixel Processor, j) Set Registration paramaters to Mosaic, Integration paramaters to MultiBandBlendingand Local Normalisation Correction, k) Press go and come back 36hours later!

The resulting image popped out and was 25000x25000!  Cropped to suit then initial stretching in Pixinsight using GHS and HT, Stars removed using StarExterminator, further stretching in Pi, save background and Stars as TIFS, move to Photoshop for colour enhancement a minor amount of work on the seams and re-screening of the Stars back in produced the image below (presented at 50pc 10000 x5000).   

This area of space contains 173 named stars, 2 Messier objects M29 and M39, 69 NGC/IC, 136 Planetary nebulae, 270 LBN, 331 LDN, 14VdB, 32 Sharpless and 61 Barnard Objects!  (According to Pixinsight)

Thanks for looking

Dave

and annotated at 25%

 

Edited August 19 by Laurin Dave

[AstroMuni]

Wonderful image as usual Dave. How many more panels needed now to reach horizon to horizon? 🙂 

[Ouroboros]

Wow! That’s some image resulting from a huge amount of work. One can only applaud your effort!   

[Kon]

Incredible image! I love the processing too.

[ONIKKINEN]

Wow, just wow. Dont even know where to begin praising this one, dont even know what to look at because there is so much stuff!

What an amazing image.

[Laurin Dave]

1 hour ago, AstroMuni said:

Wonderful image as usual Dave. How many more panels needed now to reach horizon to horizon? 🙂 

Thanks Pramod....  I'm heading East towards Cassiopeia next...  another few years though I expect

Dave 

[Laurin Dave]

1 hour ago, Kon said:

Incredible image! I love the processing too.

Thanks Kon

Dave

 

36 minutes ago, ONIKKINEN said:

Wow, just wow. Dont even know where to begin praising this one, dont even know what to look at because there is so much stuff!

What an amazing image.

Thanks ONIKKINEN

Dav

[Type1Turkey]

You've inspired me to attempt a mosaic with my 533… although I think I'd be happy with just the two panels initially! Absolutely awesome piece of work! 👏

[Laurin Dave]

12 minutes ago, Type1Turkey said:

You've inspired me to attempt a mosaic with my 533… although I think I'd be happy with just the two panels initially! Absolutely awesome piece of work! 👏

Thank you and good luck!

Dave

[ollypenrice]

That's beautifully done, Dave, and having done a few of these hyper-monster mosaics with Tom O'Donoghue, Yves van den Broek and Paul Kummer, I have my eye in on what to look for. All your bases are covered beautifully. This is a masterly job. Bravo. The background (possibly the hardest part?) simply looks as if it came from a single image.

When I de-star large mosaics in StarXterminator I find it introduces a kind of checkerboard banding pattern which then needs fastidious cosmetic correction. Do you find this? It is a problem I would be absolutely delighted not to have!! 

Anyway, this is a winner at any level.

Olly

[Laurin Dave]

1 minute ago, ollypenrice said:

That's beautifully done, Dave, and having done a few of these hyper-monster mosaics with Tom O'Donoghue, Yves van den Broek and Paul Kummer, I have my eye in on what to look for. All your bases are covered beautifully. This is a masterly job. Bravo. The background (possibly the hardest part?) simply looks as if it came from a single image.

When I de-star large mosaics in StarXterminator I find it introduces a kind of checkerboard banding pattern which then needs fastidious cosmetic correction. Do you find this? It is a problem I would be absolutely delighted not to have!! 

Anyway, this is a winner at any level.

Olly

Thank you Olly, really appreciated.   I have seen the SXT checkerboard  pattern on some of my mosaics (the Orion and Taurus ones ) but fortunately not on this one.   When they come around again I'm going to re-shoot the poorer parts  (which If I remember correctly were the worst affected areas by checkerboarding  so maybe its somethi gto do with SNR and or the amount of gradient) and also re-do the entire mosaics using the workflow I outlined in my post.  

Best wishes 

Dave 

[GordonD]

The time and effort that has gone in to this makes it something very special. And the result - awesome.

You should be very proud.

[Laurin Dave]

4 minutes ago, GordonD said:

The time and effort that has gone in to this makes it something very special. And the result - awesome.

You should be very proud.

Thank you Gordon..  you are correct I am very pleased with it

Dave

[bottletopburly]

Amazing work 🤩

[tomato]

Outstanding result, so much time and  effort but it’s all there in the final image.

A couple of years ago I did a 4 panel SY135/IMX 571 mosaic to capture M31 and M33 in the same FOV, but getting a smooth result on the star field was a real grind, so I am in awe of the work that went into this.

[Dinglem]

@Laurin Dave I can only agree with all the previous comments, I'm absolutely amazed at the skill and patience you have shown in producing such a wonderful piece of astrophotography.

I've never attempted to do a mosaic, what mount and software did you use to capture each panel?

It certainly makes me think I need to put a lot more effort into this hobby. I also need to get my SY135 out and use it a bit more.

[gorann]

That is truly outstanding Dave, both with regard to the work put into imaging and put into processing! The result is amazing. I am a bit curious about what the starless version looked like.

Cheers, Göran

[WolfieGlos]

Dave, that is simply sublime. A "like" doesn't do it justice, and neither can any comment I can make.

Bravo 👏

[Laurin Dave]

10 hours ago, bottletopburly said:

Amazing work 🤩

Thank you  

1 hour ago, tomato said:

Outstanding result, so much time and  effort but it’s all there in the final image.

A couple of years ago I did a 4 panel SY135/IMX 571 mosaic to capture M31 and M33 in the same FOV, but getting a smooth result on the star field was a real grind, so I am in awe of the work that went into this.

Thanks Steve...  there's a reason I've done Cepheus and Cygnus...   they are high in the sky here and least affected by gradients, also using  Normalise Scale Gradient then extracting a "simple" gradient from each Stack makes the starting point for APP as good as possible

Dave

1 hour ago, Dinglem said:

@Laurin Dave I can only agree with all the previous comments, I'm absolutely amazed at the skill and patience you have shown in producing such a wonderful piece of astrophotography.

I've never attempted to do a mosaic, what mount and software did you use to capture each panel?

It certainly makes me think I need to put a lot more effort into this hobby. I also need to get my SY135 out and use it a bit more.

Thank you Dinglem,  for 2022 and 2023 the Lens Camera was in my observatory on a Mesu200 (quite popular amongst commentors on this thread  ), this year its been outside on a Pegasus NYX101..  for capture software I use SGPro 

Dave

45 minutes ago, gorann said:

That is truly outstanding Dave, both with regard to the work put into imaging and put into processing! The result is amazing. I am a bit curious about what the starless version looked like.

Cheers, Göran

Thank you Goran.... like this!   It gives me something to do! and as always with Mosaics the intitial inspiration to do them results from when I walked into @ollypenrice's Les Granges 5 years ago and saw his and Tom's magnificent Orion on the wall....   Damn... I can see a join on the Starless.... 

Dave

 

37 minutes ago, WolfieGlos said:

Dave, that is simply sublime. A "like" doesn't do it justice, and neither can any comment I can make.

Bravo 👏

Thanks WolfieGlos

Dave

Edited August 20 by Laurin Dave

[geeklee]

What a project and final result Dave - fantastic work, no wonder you're pleased with the final outcome.

This is a perfect size to enjoy the wider views and still showing detail viewing at full resolution.

20 hours ago, Laurin Dave said:

 b) run the subs through Normalise Scale Gradient

I've seen you mention previously how much you value this tool.  Does APP do anything equivalent with it's LNC or is that an unrelated process?  I primarily work within APP pre-processing but will think about opening up the documentation for NSG and investigating further.

[gorann]

The starless version is also quite spectacular!

[ollypenrice]

12 hours ago, Laurin Dave said:

 Damn... I can see a join on the Starless.... 

Dave

Dave

Pssst.... Content Aware Fill!    Ssshhhh, tell nobody...

👹lly

[Elp]

AI nonsense can go in the bin.

Personally I find defects in images perfectly fine, it shows it was conducted by a person, from Earth.

The image is outstanding as it is.

Edited August 20 by Elp

[Ouroboros]

20 hours ago, Laurin Dave said:

Thank you  

Thanks Steve...  there's a reason I've done Cepheus and Cygnus...   they are high in the sky here and least affected by gradients, also using  Normalise Scale Gradient then extracting a "simple" gradient from each Stack makes the starting point for APP as good as possible

Dave

Thank you Dinglem,  for 2022 and 2023 the Lens Camera was in my observatory on a Mesu200 (quite popular amongst commentors on this thread  ), this year its been outside on a Pegasus NYX101..  for capture software I use SGPro 

Dave

Thank you Goran.... like this!   It gives me something to do! and as always with Mosaics the intitial inspiration to do them results from when I walked into @ollypenrice's Les Granges 5 years ago and saw his and Tom's magnificent Orion on the wall....   Damn... I can see a join on the Starless.... 

Dave

 

Thanks WolfieGlos

Dave

I have to say I prefer the starless version. I wonder if there’s a compromise ie starless plus’s brightest stars only. 

[Laurin Dave]

12 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

Pssst.... Content Aware Fill!    Ssshhhh, tell nobody...

👹lly

No need for that here Olly (althtough I may have used it elsewhere....    shhh  .... you may like to know (or snigger) that Pixinsight now has a similar tool ... whatever next .. Painting!  )...  its where I've badly blended the IC1396 plusHa image in ...   

Dave