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Originally Posted by rustigsmed
awesome work Colin
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Originally Posted by ChrisV
I feel like I'm up there gigapanning around !
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Originally Posted by multiweb
Geez.... that's a monumental task to get all those panels together. Really like the zoomify thing.
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Thanks
I do plan on eventually doing a zooming thing on the finished project but that's still quite some time off and I still have no idea how to do it at a higher resolution yet. Will cross that bridge when I get to it.
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Originally Posted by CalvinKlein
This is one of the most spectacular images I've ever seen Colin. I enjoy doing very widefield mosaics myself but using much larger individual panes.
Can I ask a few questions ...
1 - Where are you taking the images from (so I can get an idea of the light pollution you are dealing with)
2 - What software do you use for pointing the telescope and working out the overlap ? I use Sequence Generator Pro for small mosaics but it doesnt work at all for large ones (a known issue)
3- You mention that you had issues with some frames being below 30 degrees and specifically attribute it to the airmass. If you were in a very dark location with low light-pollution near the horizon would you get a much better result ?
Thanks, Kelvin
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Thanks Kelvin, there is just something about the level of contrast that a mosaic brings that cannot be captured in any other way. Sure, they're a lot of work but they're worth it
1. Most of it has been taken from my dark site in Heathcote, Victoria but last year I did a few trips up central NSW to get away from the perpetual Victorian cloud.
2. I've been using SGP for image capture and do want to move over to Voyager in the future for it's great focusing routines. As for creating the mosaic, I do that in TheSkyX. As you've pointed out, the FramingMosaicWizard doesn't go well wit larger mosaics. I've found that over 15º of field SPG dies on my laptop but TSX allows for easy and instant mosaics to be created. It did take quite a lot of work to figure out how to import the coordinates outputted by TSX into SGP. After I figured it out it took about 10 minutes to convert the TSX file into one that SGP could recognise. SGP also only allows for about 50 targets to be imported at once otherwise it crashes so I create a nightly target list.
3.
I didn't keep any of the really bad frames but below 25º it's possible to see atmospheric refraction as a VERY visible thing when blinking frames. Stars can move a few arcminutes!
Sky darkness has nothing to do with this as light pollution doesn't have any play with the amount of atmosphere that you're looking through. There is only two ways to beat high air mass, shoot from a mountain top in Chile or shoot higher in the sky (don't shoot below 30º).