Orion to Eta Carina 24 image mosaic

[gregbradley]

I took 29 images all sky of the Orion to Eta Carina arm of the Milky Way a few weeks ago. Its taken a while to process it as it required a lot of manual stitching etc.

This is 24 images out of the 29 in an all sky mosaic.

http://upload.pbase.com/image/148495320

Another version less wide but less distortion:

http://upload.pbase.com/image/148519875 (http://upload.pbase.com/image/148519875)

Greg.

[Larryp]

That's superb, Greg!:eyepop:

[Joshua Bunn]

Fantastic work Greg, whats your chosen stitching software?

Josh

[gregbradley]

Thanks Larry.



Cheers Josh. PTGui Pro.

Greg.

[iceman]

Very nice Greg, lovely scenes and dark skies.

I can still see some stitching problems and some ghosting in the foreground, but wow that has potential.

[RickS]

Wonderful scene, Greg!

[Ross G]

Amazing looking wide phtoto Greg.

Ross.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Mike. Horizon on the left? I'll fix that. Man I spent a LOT of time doing manual control points and stitching and excluding certain images.
I'm going to get a Nodal Ninja NN4 now. It makes these too hard when there are parallax errors. Time to take the next step up. I think I've got it now how to tame the Nikon to what I want. The Canon's tend to have a nice bluish look to skies and the Nikon tends not to so it has to be caressed over to that look a bit!



Thanks Rick. I also enjoy the outdoor night experience shooting these.
I don't have a coastal spot yet but I guess I'll have to make some trips. I do have a nearby scenic view over a large lake I intend to image from. But that would be looking towards the west so Milky Way etc would have to be setting for that to be ideal. Next August.



Cheer Ross. I have always liked these type of widefield images. The standard on this site is the highest I have seen anywhere so its a good place to advance your skills on this type of imagery.

Greg.

[Paul Haese]

Nice image Greg. The screen is expansive and seeing the ionised oxygen curving up and down is interesting. I am not sure about the sky colour myself. I like the colour rendered by the Nikon processor, but each to their own I suppose. I prefer the sky to be that grey green colour myself. I found using the sunlight white balance gives a pretty reasonable rendering of the actual sky colour.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Paul,

With digital cameras they can go anywhere really with settings. It is a matter of taste to some degree. I found the Nikon tends to have a green bias though which is to some degree artificial or at least exaggerated. So I correct for that.

The green bias of Nikon is a common topic on camera forums. In terrestial images I don't really notice it but I did with the nightscapes.
Its a fabulous camera but its good to know its biases.

Greg.

[gregbradley]

Slight repro, fixed the stitching/ghosting, reduced noise in the foreground.

Greg.

[CapturingTheNight]

Very nice image Greg :thumbsup: Always difficult to do these sort of panoramas when the Milky Way band is nearly overhead. Leads to a lot of distortion at the top if not enough sky is captured above the band. Much easier to do this sort of thing when the Milky Way is lower down, setting in the west or rising in the east. You could try stitching it in a more circular projection with the band straight and the horizon curved and then use the warp tool in PS to straighten the horizon. It can work well and can give more height to the frame without distortion in the plane of the Milky Way.
Cheers
Greg

[gregbradley]

Great tip Greg - thanks I will try that.

In the meantime here is a version which is not as wide but has very little distortion.

http://upload.pbase.com/image/148519875

[alexch]

Nice and detailed panorama, Greg!
NN head will definietly help in stitching process but it is not always automatic. However I found a tick which helps PTGUI Pro work out the control points - save images with high hoise reductions first, let PTGUI create control points automatically and then replace the images with less noise reduction.

Cheers,
Alex

[gregbradley]

Thanks for the tip Alex. I'll try that next time.

Greg.