8 panel mosaic NGC2070-Now a 12 panel mosaic finished

[allan gould]

Im slowly putting together a 12 panel mosaic of the Tarantula nebula and so far have managed to get together 8 of the 12 panels intended. Each panel is an hour of 10 min luminance subs and stitched together using a combination of Microsoft ICE and PS3.
It been a pain dodging clouds, satellites as well as rain to put it together so far, but its been a really good learning experience. I hope to see if I can home in on the SN 1987a region to see if I can see anything.
Sorry have no way of posting the 120Mb original so the 200Kb version will have to so for now.
Comments welcomed
Allan

Ive added the final 12 panel mosaic here but Im going to reprocess the whole thing as there are some slight errors in stitching that I want to eliminate. But overall I was pleased to have captured this region and it looks good as wall paper on the PC.

[LightningNZ]

Nice! Pretty epic field. It'll take a while to add colour that bad boy.
Cheers,
Cam

[RickS]

Yes, very ambitious, Allan. Especially given the current weather!

[Larryp]

Looking very nice, Allan!

[peter_4059]

Wow - thats looking great Allan - are you going to add colour?

[acropolite]

Fantastic Allan, looking forward to the finished image. :thumbsup:

[allan gould]

No colour planned at this stage and I hope to finish it off by this weekend. I must admit that the full image has excellent detail and looks great on my large PC monitor as a background.
Thanks for all the comments as they are very much appreciated.
Allan

[RobF]

Would love a link to a larger image when you complete it Alan. Kudos for such a great effort in this weather.

[batema]

Massive effort and I have no idea when you would have taken those imaqes with the weather we have been having. Looks great and yes bring on the colour.
Mark

[Ross G]

Looking good Allan.

Great detail.

Ross.

[tilbrook@rbe.ne]

Nice Alan!

Certainly a grand scale, must look awesome in your 120 meg image!

Cheers,

Justin.

[jsmoraes]

I like it. Nice work. Congratulations ! :thumbsup:

[troypiggo]

Looks great but that top right region looks a little underexposed. :)

[sjastro]

Looks interesting.
I hope you will be able to reach a compromise between image and file size.

Clear skies

Steven

[allan gould]

Well last night I trusted 7Timer and set up to complete the mosaic that I had in mind. In the end it wound up as a 12 panel mosaic about 9000x9000 pixels in dimension and about 150Mb in size so I dont think it would fit into IIS requirements for a download. Anyway excuse the compression artifacts but this is the best I could present on this forum but I'm really pleased how the whole image turned out. I spent last night litterally shooting between two banks of clouds to finish it off.
I could not have done it without Sequence Generator Pro software which enabled me to get back to the same image region to withing 2-6 pixels each time over a weeks worth of imaging. Its plate solving and autofocusing are critical to this sort of endevour.
I was pleased that the bar of the LMC is prominent in this image and shows well (Troy, thats why it appears under exposed in the top RHS of the image as there are less stars there!)
Hope you enjoy and thanks to all those that took the time to view and make a comment.

[ozstronomer]

Well done on a great image :thumbsup: I hope the weather cooperates to get the last few frames.

[gregbradley]

Brillant work. Mosaics are tough and you've done a seamless job there.

Greg.

[RobF]

How did you process the mosaic Allan? PI mosaic functions? Great job - plenty of contrast, but not flat or blown-out.

[DavidTrap]

Amazing, but how did you get clear sky last night in Brisbane??

DT

[allan gould]

No time for colour I'm afraid. I'm on to my next project,

David, between 10 til 2 am 7Timer said it would be clear and lo and behold it was but in the end it was just magic as two huge cloud banks were present but the Tarantula was right between them, but finally I could only get a 5 min sub of my last 10 min shot.

it finally did but thanks for the comments. Appreciated.

Thanks Greg, always wanted to do a biggie but where do you stop?

Rob,
all done in the end with a combination of Microsoft ice but mainly photoshop in the end

[multiweb]

That looks awesome Allan. Big project for a big area. :thumbsup:

[allan gould]

Thanks Marc, its been an interesting experience but too much time at the computer. Keep wanting to fiddle with it but thats it Im afraid and NO colour!!

[RickS]

Very nicely imaged and stitched, Allan!

[Nortilus]

superb allan...looks totally amazing..

[alan meehan]

Very good Allan ,you dont get to see this part of the sky in such detail
and wide field, its such a complex system thanks for sharing
AL

[allan gould]

Thanks for looking Rick

josh, thanks for your comments


Alan
Just had a look at this mosaic on a small iPad screen and it looks rubbish as it needs something like my large PC monitor to see the detail. Again I must say that the positioning required for this mosaic needed pixel accuracy and good goto that plate solving which Sequence Generator provided.
Thanks for your comments. Dying to get to Astrofest and do some mosaics on the veil nebula.
Allan

[David Fitz-Henr]

That looks as though it is a great image Allan, but to be able to appreciate it I'd really like access to a larger image. I have a pbase site (~$23 / year) that I post links to in this forum; not too dear and allows everyone access to the full resolution images. There are other providers as well that you may prefer.

[allan gould]

David
Thanks for the heads up as I will have to look at this possibility.
But maybe the majority of my photos arn't worth enlarging.
Allan

[strongmanmike]

Looks pretty good Allan but I agree with Fitzy, you have gone to so much trouble to compile this work mate, it really needs a much bigger file to appreciate the result properly, the jpeg artefacts are killing it here on IIS :sadeyes:. still, it is clearly a cool capture that you must be chuffed with :thumbsup:

Mike

[peter_4059]

Big project Allan. Well done.