WIP Sigma Art Mosaic

[Atmos (Colin)]

Taken last night at Heathcote, had a lot of issues to begin with like my mount not wanting to play nice! After I figured out that I just had to tune my motors it was smooth sailing in that respect, oh the noise my mount was making early on!

After that was issues with getting my laptop to talk to my camera, SGP would but MaximDL wouldn't. Struggling to get an accurate polar alignment, pretty sure that is because there is flexure somewhere with my adhoc mounting technique (several ADM plates attached together so that I could balance). Anyway, got it all running with a poor PA which definitely shows in the point accuracy. Clearly see which panels were shot on the opposite side of the meridian

Currently imaging the whole region again using another laptop and it is working good. Transparency is beyond shocking however so I think I may just end up ditching the whole night anyway. Right now I am struggling to see the fifth star in Crux Think it may get worse as the night goes on so I'll just play it by ear.

This current shot has been calibrated and kinda processed. Haven't done any gradient removal yet and some have clearly been affected by a light leak through the rear view finder.
Supposed to be a 36 panel mosaic (6x6) but is missing two panels entirely due to passing thick high level clouds. This was just a quick mashup (two hours) to see what I had to work with and how good/bad the pointing ended up being.

Each panel consists of:
3x180s
ISO400
F/2.8

Currently doesn't look like it'll be finishable this new moon period due to weather (it is a MAYBE on tonight) so fingers crossed that it'll improve at some point before Sagittarius disappears for another year.

[Slawomir (Suavi)]

I think it actually looks cool - very interesting artistic composition. Being unfinished allows a viewer to get a glimpse of the process that leads to the final photograph. I love it

[atalas]

Huge project Colin but this will be awesome when finished I recon....already looking great although I've never done any of these super wide shots I always appreciate their beauty

[gregbradley]

Very nice Colin. Doing accounting for the panels is part of the process of doing these mosaics.

Greg.

[RickS (Rick)]

Looks very promising, Colin.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Yeah wow Colin ...I love the patchwork look like this, reminds me of deep space probe data coming down . Looks like a lot of work mate...wish you the best of luck, the potential for a cosmic final result is obvious

Mike

[Atmos (Colin)]

Originally Posted by Slawomir

I think it actually looks cool - very interesting artistic composition. Being unfinished allows a viewer to get a glimpse of the process that leads to the final photograph. I love it

You do make a good point, for those that haven't done mosaicing before it does give a little insight

Originally Posted by atalas

Huge project Colin but this will be awesome when finished I recon....already looking great although I've never done any of these super wide shots I always appreciate their beauty

If I can get enough data it won't be too much of a project hopefully It's more difficult when lacking enough data to help with the issues that I've identified so far.

Originally Posted by gregbradley

Very nice Colin. Doing accounting for the panels is part of the process of doing these mosaics.

Greg.

Accounting for the panels yesterday had me come to the conclusion that I've made a pretty big mistake already Just need some more sky time to fix it but I'm not sure if I'll be able to get any this new moon. The seeing has been horrible with doesn't seem to matter with such a large image scale.

Originally Posted by RickS

Looks very promising, Colin.

Looking at the forecast I'm not holding my breath, got some nasty gradients from light leakage that I'm not sure if I can deal with.

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

Yeah wow Colin ...I love the patchwork look like this, reminds me of deep space probe data coming down . Looks like a lot of work mate...wish you the best of luck, the potential for a cosmic final result is obvious

Mike

I know what you mean Mike, like looking at the DSS images on Aladin Sky Atlas

[Atmos (Colin)]

Well, this basically shows what can be done with a little more data. I did end up getting stuff on Friday night and it wasn't until going through it on Sunday that I came to realise a few mistakes and issues that I need to keep in mind for the future.

There is a lot of random red cast that pops up due to some light leakage coming through the viewfinder. This even shows up in the darks, only 4-10 ADU at 16-bit data. This was done on a different angle to the lights so it is stronger in the lights than the darks (didn't use the darks).

This is a cropped version of frames 13-30. When I was creating the mosaic grids in TSX I had an overlap of probably about -5% which sounds utterly stupid BUT when viewed out at the angle I was working with (showing most of the sky) it looked like there was significant overlap... Apparently there wasn't! When looking at it with a whole view of the sky it shows overlap, when zooming in however that overlap disappears. So, panels 1-6 and 31-36 don't even overlap. Learned my lesson, when creating mosaics I should inspect the overlap zoomed in!!

Panels 7-12 are actually nice except for panel 8 which for some reason don't match any of the others! It is clearly a part of the Milky Way but God only knows where it actually fits in the whole grand scheme of things. Certainly doesn't correlate to any within the mosaic.

Most of the panels from Thursday night are mostly in the correct spot, Friday is perfectly placed to within a few pixels but that doesn't fix having poor panel placement to begin with

This picture is just a quick mockup however, GoodLook64 is fantastic for quick mockups! Button for Black, button for Colour Balance, slide to 150.44 stretch and Hold. Probably not what you had in mind for processing Mike but it has its purposes

Hoping to get a clear night before the moon gets too much in the way to tighten all of the mosaic grids a bit, push all of the panels together (tighter grid will allow me to use the ones that are too far out now). I must now petition the weather gods for clear nights and HORRIBLE seeing

[DJT (David)]

Awesome stuff. Hope you get it done this year. I don't have the patience for putting together these shots so kudos for those who do!