C Velorum Mosaic

[kiwiapple]

"How hard could it possibly be to shoot and stitch a multi-panel astro mosaic?" I asked myself a few weeks ago. Well, it turns out, it can be quite hard! First off, you need a string of clear nights, something that this autumn we are not having in abundance so far. Then you need to process the images and plate solve them in Pixinsight and use the somewhat cumbersome script to align and combine them. That took several tries, but I'm relatively satisfied with the result. The region of the sky is full of interesting tidbits, from the Pencil Nebula (NGC2736) in the lower-left corner, through to the Omicron Velorum cluster in the top right. There are several nebulae and of course the Vela Supernova Remnant, too. This image comprises 16 hours of integration in hydrogen-alpha and oxygen-3, shot over five panels.

UPDATE: I have given the stitching another go, after having shot two more panels last night. It turns out those were not needed, and that the issue I was having had to do with a failure to comprehend Pixinsight's mosaic script's instructions (which, to be honest, I still don't really follow). But this version is an improvement over what I had posted earlier, and did not require any of Photoshop's stamp tool to fill in gaps.

 

[AlanLichty]

That sounds like a lot of work but you did get a beautiful result out of it.

 

[JimFox]

This looks so cool James! Getting the Pencil nebula is sweet!

Mosaics are something I need to try one day. With the ASIAir, the capturing part should be simple I think? But it sounds like the stitching part is a pain. It's too bad Pixinsight can't just stitch a pano like Photoshop does, which now a days is pretty much automatic with 1 button push.

 

[kiwiapple]

This looks so cool James! Getting the Pencil nebula is sweet!

Mosaics are something I need to try one day. With the ASIAir, the capturing part should be simple I think? But it sounds like the stitching part is a pain. It's too bad Pixinsight can't just stitch a pano like Photoshop does, which now a days is pretty much automatic with 1 button push.

The ASIAIR seemed like it should have been simple to shoot the mosaic, but when I tried to stitch the images (the first time) in Pixinsight, it came out like there was a big gap in the centre somehow. But just this evening I decided to check it out one more time as I set up for the night and it seemed that it was all covered as it should have been--the issue was in my Pixinsight implementation after all (but even so, I decided to shoot another panel or two just to fill in some gaps). I have since done a bit more work with PI and I now understand the script a bit better and I managed to get a bit better result even without tonight's images being thrown into the mix (yet).

 

[Mike Lewis]

James,

Really excellent, you are on the fast track with your results these days. Such a cool area of the sky that we just cannot experience up here. I especially like the section with the Pencil Nebula that you pointed out - that is a fantastic object in its own right and great to see it in a larger view like this.

ML

 

[Dan Moorehead]

Stunning